Trump supporters in China are up in arms and raging about a possible indictment: "Trump, America needs you"

Domestic Left-Wing Extremist Groups More Dangerous Than 'MAGA Republicans': Experts Authored by Scott Wheeler via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), National security analysts, scholars, and a federal indictment reveal that threats from left-wing extremist groups in the United States are more dangerous than right-wing and “MAGA Republican” groups recently cited by the Biden administration as “threats to democracy.” An Antifa extremist pushes a burning recycling bin at Trump supporters during a free speech rally in Berkeley, Calif., on April 15, 2017. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images) According to the U.S. government, some of the left-wing groups are being funded by Russian influence operations to “sow discord, spread pro-Russian propaganda, and interfere in elections within the United States.” On July 29, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the indictment of a Russian national for working on behalf of the Russian government to sow discord in the United States. “From at least December 2014 until March 2022, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a resident of Moscow, together with at least three Russian officials, engaged in a years-long foreign malign influence campaign targeting the United States” the indictment alleged. A DOJ press release stated, “Ionov—working under the supervision of the FSB [Russia’s Federal Security Services] and with the Russian government’s support—recruited political groups within the United States, including U.S. Political Group 1 in Florida, U.S. Political Group 2 in Georgia, and U.S. Political Group 3 in California, and exercised direction or control over them on behalf of the FSB.” Russia Supports Left-wing Groups Ionov’s activities were not in support of right-wing groups, the operation was allegedly funding left-wing groups that promoted socialism, defunding police, and California secession, according to multiple reports. In August, the Tampa Bay Times reported that “Political Group 1” named in the indictment is the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) of St Petersburg, Florida. On the group’s website, its chairman, Omali Yeshitela, is quoted as saying “we need a revolution” and promotes calls for reparations for slavery. On July 29, the same day the indictment for Ionov was unsealed, it was raided by the FBI, according to the APSP. When contacted for comment, a spokesman for the APSP said it was unlikely that the group would be able to answer questions from The Epoch Times based on advice from counsel. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution identified “Political Group 2” in a July 29 article as the Atlanta-based Black Hammer Party. On May 31, 2020, the group’s website featured a statement by Ionov responding to the death of George Floyd that stated: “Justice for George Floyd and all Colonized people (aka “people of color”), who have died at the hands of White Power Colonial terrorism (aka america’s racist police system).” The group states it exists to “take the land back for all colonized people worldwide … Currently, our physical and intellectual labor is being coerced to build for the capitalist white colonial state, but it can be redirected to a noble cause.” The Black Hammer Party could not be reached for comment. The Sacramento Bee identified “Political Group 3” as Yes California, an organization formed to promote California secession from the United States. Louis Marinelli, the founder of the organization, had worked in Russia teaching English. According to some news sources, Marinelli may once have held conservative views, however, the Yes California Twitter feed was critical of President Donald Trump and suggested that his “reactionary” policies were helping to drive the California secession movement. Marinelli could not be reached for comment. President Joe Biden delivers a primetime speech at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia on Sept. 1, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) Politicizing Domestic Threats Critics have accused the Biden administration of using the levers of the federal government to attack his political opposition by prioritizing what he calls threats to democracy and domestic tranquility. Biden’s list of targets has included Trump supporters, “election deniers,” and “white supremacists.” In early September, bathed in a red-lit backdrop and flanked by two U.S. Marines, Biden told the nation, “There is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.” Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has made groups and individuals that Biden considers a threat a priority for investigation. The DHS refused to be interviewed for this report but provided a “Summary of Terrorism Threat to the United States” which was published in the June National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin. The bulletin stated: “The continued proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding current events could reinforce existing personal grievances or ideologies, and in combination with other factors, could inspire individuals to mobilize to violence.” Many of the domestic threats listed in the bulletin were identifying those who question the administration’s policies: “Some domestic violent extremists have expressed grievances related to their perception that the U.S. government is unwilling or unable to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.” “Given a high-profile U.S. Supreme Court case about abortion rights, individuals who advocate both for and against abortion have, on public forums, encouraged violence, including against government, religious, and reproductive healthcare personnel and facilities, as well as those with opposing ideologies.” The bulletin also predicts, “As the United States enters mid-term election season this year, we assess that calls for violence by domestic violent extremists directed at democratic institutions, political candidates, party offices, election events, and election workers will likely increase.” While the DHS and the Biden administration say they are expecting violence from right-wing groups, others say there is a more pressing threat from the left. Academic Report Fears Leftists In the summer of 2020, Rutgers University’s Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience issued a report (pdf) that found evidence that left-wing groups pose a considerable threat: “Anarcho-socialist militias which explicitly glorify Martyr narratives, classic authoritarian narratives, and revolutionary narratives are now formally organizing—and are growing.” The Miller Center cited leftist groups such as the Youth Liberation Front, John Brown Gun Club, Redneck Revolt, and the Socialist Rifle Association, among others, which claim 10,000 to 40,000 members on social media accounts. The Miller Center report says these groups use social media to promote violence: “Extreme anarcho-socialist fringe online forums on Reddit use memes calling for the death of police and memes for stockpiling munitions to promote violent revolution.” The report cites the example of Willem Van Spronsen who was shot and killed during a shootout with police in July 2019. Van Spronsen was fire-bombing an Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Washington state. Multiple news reports state that Van Spronsen was a member of Antifa and the John Brown Gun Club. According to the global nonprofit organization Counter Extremism Project (CEP), many of these groups operate “under the wide umbrella of Antifa” which is made up of individual cells and “the leaders of these cells remain autonomous,” states CEP’s reporting. John Farmer, Director of the Miller Center, in an email response to questions from The Epoch Times, stated that he does not see a serious national security threat from either the right or left. “Quite frankly, I don’t view either the so-called ‘anarcho-socialist extremists’ or the ‘white nationalist extremists’ as a serious threat to national security,” Farmer stated. However, extremists on both sides do pose problems, according to Farmer: “Each in their own way is a threat to public order; each, for different reasons, seeks to destabilize our institutions and overthrow the established norms of democracy. Each has proven violent, even murderous, in differing contexts.” What Political Attacks Mean J. Michael Waller, a national security and intelligence expert at the Center for Security Policy, told The Epoch Times that the Biden administration is “trying to frighten the public” by labeling Trump supporters as threats to democracy: “They are trying to create a political, psychological, and legal pretext for cracking down on groups and larger movements that they can connect through guilt by association.” Waller compares this sort of labeling to the so-called “red scare” period during the Cold War. “If you apply subjective definitions to words, and you make the words mean what you want them to mean, and you recklessly apply those words to your opponent, you are creating a 21st-century red scare.” Waller says he sees a disturbing pattern in Biden’s words. “You label someone you don’t like with an inflammatory term that objectively does not apply, which gives you the public support you need to amass more power to create more bureaucracy. You then have the legal grounds to go after what amounts to political opponents.” “Look at the way they throw around the word ‘fascists,” Waller said. “They are not even using the objective definition of fascist.” Why Trump Supporters Emily Finley, author of “The Ideology of Democratism,” told The Epoch Times that the Biden administration is laying the groundwork to “normalize the idea that MAGA Republicans are extremists,” adding that “the larger philosophical impetus” behind Biden’s Philadelphia speech is to segregate and “marginalize” MAGA Republicans. Read more here... Tyler Durden Fri, 10/14/2022 - 23:00.....»»

Julian Assange And Our Impunity Democracy Authored by James Bovard via The Mises Institute, On Saturday, protests supporting Julian Assange occurred around the world. In London, Assange supporters linked arms around the parliament building. Protests also occurred outside the Justice Department headquarters in Washington (I was one of the speakers), D.C., and in San Francisco, Tulsa, Denver, and Seattle, as well as in Australia. Four years ago, I wrote a USA Today column calling for Assange to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom. My piece failed to sway the Trump White House and the Biden administration has taken up the prosecution of one of the most important truth tellers of this century. Assange has been locked away for years in a maximum-security prison in Britain. He is facing extradition to face 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information. If the Brits deliver Assange to the U.S. government, he has almost no chance for a fair trial because of how prosecutions are rigged in federal court. The last four years have revealed why activists like Assange, who has been held for years in a maximum-security British prison, are vital to any hope of making rulers accountable to the citizenry. Attorney General Ramsey Clark warned in 1967, “Nothing so diminishes democracy as secrecy.” At this point, America is an Impunity Democracy in which government officials pay no price for their abuses. Assange was targeted by the U.S. government after his organization, Wikileaks, disclosed tens of thousands of documents and some videos exposing crimes committed by the U.S. military against Afghan and Iraqi civilians. A 2010 Christian Science Monitor report on the leak noted that it was “unclear how Americans might react to revelations about apparent indiscriminate killing of Afghan civilians” by American forces. But the Monitor headline captured the verdict in Washington: “Congress's response to WikiLeaks: shoot the messenger.” Vice President Joe Biden denounced Assange as a “high-tech terrorist.”  Federal agencies could not prove that any of the information that Wikileaks released was false. At the court martial of former Army Corporal Bradley Manning, who leaked the documents, prosecutors failed to show that any information Wikileaks disclosed had led to the death of a single person in Afghanistan or Iraq. That conclusion was re-confirmed by a 2017 investigation by PolitiFact. Even Biden admitted in 2010 that “I don't think there's any substantive damage” from the Wikileaks revelations.” But Assange was guilty of violating the U.S. government’s divine right to blindfold the American people. Washington policymakers damned Assange and expanded the role of the U.S. military in the Afghan conflict. Atrocities continued, helping turn the Afghan people against the U.S. military and a Kabul government that was seen as a Washington puppet. When the Afghan military collapsed like a house of cards in 2021, Washington policymakers were stunned at the Taliban’s lightning triumph. But they were shocked simply because they had ignored the truths that Wikileaks revealed. When the federal indictment against Assange was announced in 2019, a New York Times editorial declared that it was “aimed straight at the heart of the First Amendment” and would have a “chilling effect on American journalism as it has been practiced for generations.” Unfortunately, Americans and foreigners continue to suffer because of the perennial cover-ups of U.S. foreign interventions. After Britain arrested Assange on behalf of the U.S. government in 2019, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) whooped that Assange "is our property and we can get the facts and the truth from him." But Manchin had no recommendations on how Americans can “get the facts and the truth” from the federal government. Biden has ramped up U.S. bombings in Somalia: who exactly are we killing? It is a secret. Which Syrian terrorist groups are the U.S. government still bankrolling? It’s a secret. Why is the U.S. continuing to assist Saudi atrocities against Yemeni civilians? It’s a secret.  And then there’s the biggest and most dangerous secret operation on the horizon right now - the U.S. intervention in the Russia-Ukraine war. Folks can condemn Russia and support Ukraine without believing that Washington policymakers deserve a blank check to potentially drag America into a nuclear war. Are CIA analysts or Pentagon officials issuing warnings about U.S. government actions in this conflict could lead to a spiral that ends in catastrophe? Unfortunately, Americans won’t learn of any such memos until damage has been done. And if a disaster occurs, then we’ll see the same sham that occurred after the Iraq War – some Senate Committee blathering that no one is to blame because everyone in Washington was a victim of “group think.” Federal prosecutors stress that Assange leaked “classified” information. But federal agencies are creating trillions of pages of new “classified’ secrets each year. Yet, any information which is classified is treated like a political holy relic that cannot be exposed without cursing the nation. Pervasive secrecy helps explain the collapse of trust in Washington. Americans today are more likely to believe in witches, ghosts, and astrology than to trust the federal government. Adding Assange’s scalp to the Justice Department’s trophy wall will do nothing to end the mistrust of the political ruling class that has dragged America into so many debacles.  Assange is guilty of lese-majeste - embarrassing the government by exposing their follies, frauds, and crimes. Assange declared years ago, “If wars can be started by lies, they can be stopped by truth.” Dropping the charges against Assange is the best way for the Biden administration to prove it is serious about ending excessive secrecy. Tyler Durden Mon, 10/10/2022 - 05:00.....»»

The war in Ukraine has isolated Moscow internationally and raised doubts about the quality of Russian-made military hardware. A prototype of Russia's Su-75 Checkmate fighter jet at the MAKS-2021 air show outside Moscow in July 2021.AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko The Su-75 "Checkmate" is Russia's attempt at building a fifth-generation fighter for export. But the war in Ukraine has isolated Moscow internationally and raised doubts about Russian hardware. Those issues may steer even Russia's traditional defense partners toward other fighter options. The Su-75 "Checkmate" is Russia's attempt at an export fifth-generation fighter.Billed as a cheaper F-35 with better specs than the JAS-39 Gripen, Russia designed the Su-75 specifically to sell to countries with no homegrown aeronautical industry.Originally revealed at the MAKS Airshow last year, the Su-75 was hailed as a solid move by Russia's United Aerospace Corporation, building off the Su-57 platform — Russia's first fifth-generation fighter.However, since its release, the fortunes of the Su-75 have fallen quite far.Stats and specsA Su-75 Checkmate prototype at MAKS-2021 in July 2021.Sputnik/Alexei Nikolskyi/Kremlin via REUTERSThe Sukhoi-designed Su-75 boasts many features to make it attractive to foreign buyers. Its single engine means fewer maintenance costs as well as less fuel consumption. Stealth characteristics such as an internal weapons bay, diverterless inlets, and a unique tail design are all a must have for fifth-generation fighters.Additional fifth-generation aspects of the Su-75 are its ability to coordinate with drones, an emerging technology and doctrine which air forces hope to use to overcome enemy air defenses. These drones will be managed by an advanced AI onboard computer and avionics system which is capable of tracking and engaging up to six targets at once.These upgrades represent a major step up from previous Russian exports such as the Su-30 and Mig-35. However, they are balanced by an affordable $25 million to $30 million price tag, one-quarter of the cost of an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.A Rostec spokesperson described the new fighter jet as a cutting-edge addition to the air-defense realm. They note that "The Checkmate fighter is outfitted with versatile armaments capable of fighting any threat: from unsheltered command posts to especially sensitive targets for a potential enemy."The jet was allegedly designed using a supercomputer and modern-day virtual modelling and digital calculations.Initial interestA prototype of Russia's Su-57 at the MAKS-2021 air show.AP Photo/Alexander ZemlianichenkoAfter the rollout of the Su-75, it appeared that Vietnam and India were to be the primary buyers with Argentina also potentially pursuing a deal.Additionally, as early as January of this year, the United Arab Emirates seemed to be involved in a deal with the UAC to assist in the production and manufacture of the Su-75 following the suspension of a $23 billion arms deal with the US.A critical blunderRussia's ill-conceived invasion of Ukraine has put a major damper on their aerospace industry and hopes for the Su-75. International sanctions have crippled Russia's ability to acquire and produce essential components of modern aircraft.Most notably, precision machining equipment and semiconductors, without which the advanced avionics system is completely unable to function. This has ramifications for the production of an airworthy Su-75, now projected to fly in 2024 as well as future sales. If Russia struggles to guarantee parts and maintenance, it may turn off potential buyers.Beyond questions of production, there is the rather large elephant in the room that is the performance of Russian jets in Ukraine. The loss of Su-30s, 34s, and even a 35 may make nations leery of purchasing aircraft untested by combat.Making the process more difficultIn addition to the challenges presented by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the sanctions which arose from a Russian Invasion, the UAC seems intent on making the development process as difficult as possible.Apparently, designers are working on an unmanned version of the Su-75 in parallel with the manned variant. Given the inherent challenges in designing an unmanned combat aircraft (UCAV) — none have yet been used in combat and the only UCAVs currently flying are based on modifications to existing, proven airframes — it is difficult to see how Russia expects to develop the Su-75 into a UCAV when the manned version has yet to have a successful test flight.Su-75 and the futureA Checkmate prototype at the MAKS-2021 air show.Sputnik/Alexei Nikolskyi/Kremlin via REUTERSFor now, it seems that the Su-75 program continues to limp along. Russian officials claim the jet will have its first flight in 2024 however it remains to be seen whether they will meet this deadline under the stringent sanctions and with the ongoing war in Ukraine.Furthermore, it appears that the United Arab Emirates has at least paused its involvement in the project, drying up a critical source of funding and R&D.While Vietnam and India may still be interested, it is unclear whether Russia will find a market for the Su-75 if it does enter production. As Harrison Kass of 19FortyFive says "…countries within the Russian sphere of influence are still going to buy Russian equipment, regardless of whether the international community is upset with Putin."It remains to be seen, however, whether other concerns trump traditional considerations when it comes to arms purchases. Additionally, if the production estimates of the Su-75 continue to be delayed, foreign clients may look elsewhere to fulfill their fighter needs.Maya Carlin is a Middle East Defense editor with 19FortyFive. She is also an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has bylines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Welcome To The "Say Nothing" Phase Of This 'Fourth Turning' Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog, ‘Whatever you say, say nothing.’ – Old Irish Phrase “God made the Catholics, but the Armalite made them equal.” ― Patrick Radden Keefe It has become clear to me, since the installation of dementia patient Biden as the illegitimate figurehead president by his globalist Deep State handlers, their agenda is to tear down our modern civilization and replace it with a totalitarian techno-gulag where you will be electronically monitored, disarmed, own nothing, be judged by social credit score, live in fear, and be happy – or else. I’ve been pondering in which direction this Fourth Turning will flow, while observing the words and actions of our pedophile president and the other World Economic Forum puppets like Trudeau, Macron, and a myriad of other EU lackeys. I intellectually understand all Fourth Turnings reach their climax after immense bloodshed, climactic battles which could have gone either way, and in some cases saw citizens slaughtering fellow citizens. But I have tried to avoid thinking about the reality of what is likely to happen over the next five to ten years, as this Crisis turns from rhetoric and debate to violence and death. Keyboard warriors will yield to real warriors. After reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s – Say Nothing – a fascinating tale of the brutal violence which lasted for three decades from the 1960’s through the 1990’s in Northern Ireland, I’ve come to the realization of what civil war might look like here in America. In reality, the conflict in Ireland between the Catholics and Protestants dated back centuries. “In 1689, Protestant forces loyal to William of Orange, the new king, had managed to hold the city against a siege by a Catholic army loyal to James II.” ― Patrick Radden Keefe The vitriolic discord and purposeful fracturing of our shared societal values, which have bound this nation since its inception, has situated the country in an 1860 moment, a veritable powder keg with a lit fuse. The country has been gravely splintered for at least two decades, but the fissure has expanded at an accelerated velocity since the unanticipated election of Donald Trump in 2016. The rule of law no longer exists. A four-year coup against Trump, with Clinton, Obama, DOJ, CIA, FBI, Congress, Judiciary, legacy media, and social media titans as co-conspirators, has now devolved into an Orwellian police state, with the Constitution trashed and government tyranny reaching unthinkable heights. The third world totalitarian tactics being used by Biden’s handlers to destroy the opposition party and its leader is being cheered on by the left and their media mouthpieces. Biden’s diabolically dark, hateful speech, with satanic blood red background, on the sacred ground where our Founding Fathers declared our independence from a tyrannical despot, appears to be the spark which will ignite real violence in the coming years. The simmering hatred between the left and right has been rising towards a boiling point since the 2016 election. Everything Biden and his Obama handlers have done since his installation as president in the rigged 2020 election has been designed to sow discord, create chaos, and tear apart the fabric of this country. Authoritarian despots always accuse the opposition of crimes they themselves are guilty of having committed. When you control the levers of power and the propaganda machine known as the media, you can literally flaunt the laws of the land and persecute those who disagree or fail to comply with your dictates. Elevating a protest by a few goofballs who were lured into the Capital by undercover FBI plants (Ray Epps) as an armed insurrection (with no arms), has been a pitiful display of partisanship and failed to accomplish the task of having Trump charged with a crime. This after two failed impeachment attempts based on actual crimes committed by the Biden crime family. With the approach of the November midterms, Covid fear being replaced by vaxx injury outrage, inflation raging at 17% (the way it was measured in 1980), a recession in progress, layoffs beginning to ramp up, stock market falling, Russia sanctions only hurting the American and European working class, and Biden’s approval rating at 38%, the globalist Deep State invisible government have decided it’s time for some civil chaos to further their New World Order agenda. It all began with pitting those who chose to let their immune systems do their jobs and/or using safe effective cheap treatments like ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, zinc/quercetin, and vitamin D, against Fauci, Biden and their Big Pharma benefactors forcing an untested, dangerous, experimental gene therapy into the bodies of every human on the planet. They lied about its effectiveness, spike protein remaining confined in arms, safety, immunity power, and length of efficacy. They colluded with Twitter, Facebook, and Google to censor and suppress the truth about the vaccines, doctors with contrary opinions, and the safe effective alternatives. All done to enrich Big Pharma, who paid off politicians, doctors, hospitals, and a plethora of apparatchiks willing to sell their souls and sacrifice lives for the almighty buck. When Biden and his handlers decided to scapegoat and vilify those who chose to not become guinea pigs in the unwarranted vaccine war against a relatively non-lethal flu (unless you were 85 years old and/or extremely obese), knowing his national vaccine mandate was un-Constitutional and unenforceable, those with critical thinking skills could see the budding authoritarianism from Biden, along with the other WEF acolytes like Trudeau, Macron, and Boris Johnson. Biden’s willingness to have people fired, ostracized, and destroyed for exercising bodily autonomy regarding a vaccine that didn’t prevent you from getting it, spreading it, being hospitalized, or dying was a flashing warning light of what was going to happen in the last month. The lockdowns, destruction of small businesses while promoting big business, forced masking as a mark of obedience and compliance, and utter disregard for the education of our children, were all part of this Great Reset scheme to remake the world in the vision of Gates, Schwab, Soros, and the rest of the Davos billionaire satanic cult. These acts of vengeance against those with differing political, economic, and social viewpoints have intensified over the last several months as a sense of impending doom has shrouded the totalitarian, communist, woke, incompetent Biden administration, with the looming loss of both the House and Senate leading to gridlock, increasing conflict, and more desperate executive orders from the senile pedophile. The ramping up of grooming children at drag queen shows and encouraging children towards irreversible mutilation of their bodies in the name of gender choice is beyond evil and can only be explained as further attempt to destroy our society as part of the Great Reset agenda. The FBI raid on Biden’s chief political adversary and likely opponent in 2024 over some documents requested by the National Archives is a red herring in the never-ending coup against Trump and a last-ditch attempt to keep him from running in 2024. During his first term Trump made the drastic mistake of not purging the DOJ, FBI, CIA, and State Department of his enemies. He hired swamp creatures and neo-cons into his cabinet whose sole purpose was to thwart whatever he tried to do. And his biggest blunder was believing Fauci, Birx, and the rest of the Covid cultists in locking down the country, schools, and businesses, while cheering on and promoting the Big Pharma jabs which have killed and injured more people than they supposedly saved. His continued support for these never-ending shots from hell is mind bogglingly idiotic and should make anyone question his ability to succeed in a second term. Is he better than Dementia Joe, the Kneepads Kackler, or any of the other left-wing loons on the Democrat bench? Yes. But is that good enough with an economic collapse, civil war, and global war just over the horizon? The skies are darkening, and the direst days of this Fourth Turning are almost upon us. I know the degradation of the intellectual, moral, and critical thinking skills of the American populace due to decades in government indoctrination centers known as public schools along with relentless propaganda and misinformation spewed from our boob tubes and now “smart” phones has reached critical mass, with little hope for a reversal until a full-out societal collapse. Well, that is where we are headed, because that is the course set in motion by those we trusted to lead this country. What ails this country, and the world is too much debt, too much corruption, too much materialism, too many lies, too much propaganda, too much delusion, too much stupidity, too much evil, and absolutely no solutions put forth which are capable of saving us from the course we chose decades ago. We are hurtling towards an abyss and there is no way of voting ourselves out of it. The uniparty agrees on 90% of the issues and pass trillions in spending bills while jointly supporting never ending wars and unaccountable central bankers who print fiat to infinity. Political parties have failed the people and rooting for our team is still used to keep us divided and unaware of how badly we have been screwed over by these politician puppets doing the bidding of the globalist billionaire cabal who really run the show. This all set the stage for Biden’s Satanic Verses speech this past week. The Trojan Horse president didn’t write that hateful war declaration against half the country. He didn’t choose the location of Independence Hall. He didn’t ask for the blood red and dark palette as his background. He didn’t station marines in the background as a symbol of war. He didn’t remember what he read off the teleprompter the next day. He and his left-wing apparatchiks can try to walk back his declaration of war, but his satanic hate manifesto will forever be burned into the minds of the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump and the millions more who voted for Biden, thinking his unifier drivel during his basement campaign was truthful. Biden’s handlers purposefully designed this speech to ignite civil chaos. It was a dog whistle to the left-wing BLM, ANTIFA and other violent hate groups that it is open season on Trump and his supporters. Declaring them extremists and an imminent threat to the country, Biden dehumanized anyone who does not support his authoritarian regime. We have already seen the attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh and harassment and threats of violence against other justices. There has been a concerted effort by the left (and possibly operatives within the government) to have Steve Bannon and Marjorie Taylor Greene assassinated by the police through technologically advanced swatting calls. Next, we will have any home flying a Trump or MAGA flag burned to the ground by Biden’s army of woke thugs. Biden’s managers and his diversity hire spokesbimbos continue to fan the flames of violence. They are attempting to goad Trump supporters into acts of violence so they can declare an emergency and either cancel the November elections or institute mail-in voting once again to steal them as they did in 2020. Despite Biden’s repulsive war-mongering rhetoric, and threats to use F-15s against those who don’t bow down to his demands, it is highly unlikely Trump supporters will take the bait and initiate violence against the government or their Soros funded left wing lackey militias. The average hard-working American, getting destroyed by Biden’s policies, is content to watch Democrat controlled shithole cities go up in flames as lawlessness reigns, mass murder occurs on daily basis, and businesses flee to safer confines. They are told by the GOP portion of the uniparty to vote republican in November and save the country. Of course, the RINOs in control of the republican party don’t have the guts or desire to change anything. If they were to take Congress, they would not impeach Biden, investigate Hunter, prosecute Fauci, or stop the DOJ and FBI from conducting their ongoing vendetta against Trump. Biden and the left have already declared war. They will do whatever it takes to win. It’s already clear the Constitution, election laws, and First Amendment are meaningless in their thirst for power, control, and wealth. As of now only the Second Amendment keeps them from forcefully putting us in re-education camps. It’s only the 400 million legally owned guns (give or take a few) keeping Biden and his totalitarian hordes at bay. Biden’s speech was an act of desperation, as his handlers seeing their Great Reset agenda going awry, are trying to initiate another engineered “Covid-like” national emergency they can utilize to subdue dissent. The next two months may decide the future course of history in this country. They appear to be laying the groundwork for a false flag of immense proportions. The apparent suicidal actions being taken by European leaders regarding Russian gas and Putin shutting the Nordsteam 1 pipeline until the West revokes their sanctions will either lead to surrender by the EU and splintering of their subservient submission to the American Empire or actual conflict between NATO and Russia, with China and India supporting Russia. We already know it is just a matter of time until the U.S. financial markets break under the strain of reality, with stocks, bonds and real estate all poised to fall by at least 50% over the coming years. Has the globalist cabal concluded their dementia ridden sucker is expendable and will engineer another JFK moment, with an assassination attributed to some Trump dupes? The FBI already engineered the fake Whitmer kidnapping plot. Taking out their useful idiot Biden to further their agenda wouldn’t give these vile Deep State operatives a second thought. Combining a global conflict, with a financial implosion, and a false flag event blamed on Trump would be the perfect storm to cancel the November elections and lockdown the country once again. All signs point toward something big about to ignite the powder keg and propel this Fourth Turning to a new level of violent upheaval. Here is where Patrick Radden Keefe’s documentation of the violence, retribution, hatred, and resolve of “civilized” Irishmen during the battle for Northern Ireland, known as The Troubles, from the 1960’s through the 1990’s until an uneasy accord was reached in 1998, offers a glimpse into what a civil war might look like in America. A key point is when the definition of humanity in the minds of those at war stops at the border of their tribe. The enemy is not considered human; therefore, it is not murder when you kill them or blow them up. The ethical justification for killing “innocents” becomes easier when your enemy is not considered human. Biden has already set in motion that anyone who voted for or supports Trump is a dangerous sub-human, providing the justification for his side, including his government police thugs and woke military, to treat us as the enemy. During The Troubles, the Irish Republican Army planted car bombs in London and in Northern Ireland business districts, killing and maiming whoever happened to be in the vicinity. They blew up Lord Mountbatten on his boat. They attempted to blow up the Queen in Scotland in 1981. They came very close to assassinating Margaret Thatcher at the Brighton Hotel in 1984, killing five and injuring dozens. British soldiers were lured into traps and executed. Over the three decades of The Troubles there were 3,500 deaths, with more than half being civilians. Factions within the IRA killed each other. There were undercover agents and double agents for each side. If you said something while under British interrogation, you were likely to be disappeared into the Irish bogs. It was a violent and ruthless conflict with no rules and no mercy. The British committed as many atrocities as their Irish opponents. Legality and rule of law was paid no heed. As Keefe documented, the conflict began as a dispute between the unionists and loyalists and grew into a vicious civil war of neighborhoods versus neighborhoods. “We beat them with stones at first, and they had guns. Our people had to go and get guns. Wouldn’t they have been right stupid people to stand there? Our people got shotguns at first and then got better weapons. And then the British, who were supposed to protect us, came in and raided our homes. What way could you fight? So you went down and you blew them up.” ― Patrick Radden Keefe The political and religious hatreds had been brewing for centuries in Ireland. The level of vitriol and hate in the U.S. has really only reared its ugly head over the last two decades, with a notable hastening since Obama’s election in 2008. He proceeded to divide America through his communist agenda and blatant efforts to create racial and gender rifts, while still kowtowing to the Wall Street and globalist cabal which placed him in power. The ascendancy of Trump to the throne drove the left mad, as burning, and looting cities over the perceived fake race issues enflamed by Obama was cheered on by the left-wing media and politicians. Violence has been promoted and condoned by the left. The question is, what will it take to provoke a violent response by the right, who happen to own most of the firearms in this country. What will it take to turn Twitter warriors into armed warriors? Keefe laid out thoughts about Irish Americans during The Troubles which addresses real war versus verbal war. “Indeed, it could occasionally seem that support for the armed struggle was more fervent in Boston or Chicago than it was in Belfast or Derry. The romantic idyll of a revolutionary movement is easier to sustain when there is no danger that one’s own family members might get blown to pieces on a trip to the grocery store. Some people in Ireland looked askance at the “plastic Paddies” who urged bloody war in Ulster from the safe distance of America.” ― Patrick Radden Keefe Most of those on the right are hardworking, law abiding, family-oriented individuals who are slow to anger and do not react violently to incoherent left-wing rhetoric, verbal threats, or even being called dangerous extremists. When they or their families are threatened with violence, all bets are off. The left can allow their cities to burn and the inhabitants to shoot each other over drugs, but once the threat of violence reaches the countryside and suburbs, where a considerable number of awakened critical thinking citizens are armed, Biden and his cronies will get their civil war. The extremist MAGA minions will not shoot first, but once alerted to the threat from what passes for our government and their BLM/ANTIFA terrorist arm, they will be poised to fight back. If this powder keg ignites, it will make the three decades of violence in Northern Ireland look like a walk in the park. Those who live their lives with a linear mindset, brainwashed by public school indoctrination, distracted by their myriad of electronic gadgets, and trapped on the hamster wheel of trying to accumulate more material goods while going further in debt, are unprepared for the coming level of violent upheaval about to be unleashed upon this nation. No one with a conscience and morality is rooting for a civil war, but our figurehead president has already declared war, with the shooting yet to commence. It feels much like the ambiguous period between Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861. We are waiting for the event and/or act which will initiate the vicious phase of this Fourth Turning. We know it will happen, but we don’t know when, where or who will pull the trigger. “Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a saecular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning Our civilized society is about to turn into a barbarous hellscape, unrecognizable from the comfort and safety we have grown accustomed to since the last Fourth Turning. The cycles of history spin from highs to lows, with death and destruction always entering the picture at some point. Human nature never changes; therefore, we are condemned to repeat the errors of the past while creating new errors along the way. That feeling of doom you should be experiencing at this point in history is well founded. Prepping for the coming storms is a worthwhile expenditure of your time but making sure you tribe up with like minded armed individuals will be your best bet to survive. You have been declared an enemy of the state. That is all the incentive you should need to do whatever is necessary to win this coming war. Remember – Whatever You Say, Say Nothing. *  *  * The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation.   Tyler Durden Tue, 09/06/2022 - 16:20.....»»

Numerous Russian state television programs have broadcast the promotional trailer to "My Son Hunter" in its entirety, The Daily Beast reported. Russian President Vladimir Putin toasts during reception for military servicemen who took part in Syrian campaign on December 28, 2017 in Moscow, Russia.Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images A right-wing film attacking Joe Biden and his son Hunter is getting attention on Kremlin TV. Numerous programs have broadcast the promotional trailer in its entirety, The Daily Beast reported. One host said she hopes the film will help in the US "to bring our beloved Trump back into power." Russian state media propagandists are aggressively promoting "My Son Hunter," a film attacking President Joe Biden and his son that will be distributed by the far-right Breitbart when it premeirs on September 7.Numerous Russian state television programs have broadcast the promotional trailer in its entirety, The Daily Beast reported. The trailer hints at drug abuse and allegations of illegal activity by Hunter Biden and attempts to draw connections to the president.There are also references to a laptop, allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden, that became the subject of a highly controversial New York Post story with several red flags that raised questions about its authenticity.One Russian state media show host who is also a deputy of Russia's State Duma, Evgeny Popov, said Republicans produced the "scandalous" film because "they got tired of waiting for justice," The Daily Beast reported. He suggested the film is intended to help them during the midterm elections, and called the laptop former President Donald Trump's "main 'trump card.'"Co-host Olga Skabeeva said, "We're waiting for the premiere and hoping for a big success in the United States, to bring our beloved Trump back into power."Another seven-minute segment on the state TV show Vesti at 20:00 included the promo and clips of Fox host Tucker Carlson and Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, accusing the FBI of "interfering in elections" by not investigating the laptop, The Daily Beast reported.Republicans are itching to ramp up investigations of Hunter if they win control of Congress in November. They hope to find wrongdoing they can link to the president ahead of the 2024 election, in case he chooses to run again.Breitbart says the film marks its expansion into film distribution. The trailer was released on Truth Social last week. Hunter Biden has previously disclosed a federal investigation into his taxes. No evidence has suggested that his work influenced Joe Biden's policy decisions.On Monday,Trump demanded reinstatement as president or "a new Election, immediately" after news that Facebook temporarily limited a controversial story about Hunter Biden's laptop in users' news feeds before the 2020 election.With the war in Ukraine raging on and the Biden administration firmly backing Kyiv as both sides experience heavy losses, the Kremlin's propagandists have ramped up rhetorical support for Trump — particularly in the wake of an FBI raid on his Florida home. Russian state news has parroted talking points of the far right in the US, baselessly presenting Trump as the victim of a politically motivated investigation. Like prominent figures on the far right, the Kremlin's mouthpieces have suggested that the raid could spark civil war in the US. In recent years, the national security community in the US has repeatedly warned that the Kremlin wants to sow divisions in the US."The Russians are trying to get us to tear ourselves apart," FBI Director Christopher Wray said during a cybersecurity conference in New York City last month, per the New York Times.The US intelligence community concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 and 2020 elections to boost Trump's chances of winning, though it's underscored that none of these efforts altered final results. With midterms on the horizon, US intelligence agencies and congressional lawmakers continue to express concerns about Russian election interference. The Department of Homeland Security in June warned that Moscow will "probably" attempt to undermine the November elections as retribution for US support for Ukraine, according to a report obtained by CNN. "We expect Russian interference in the upcoming 2022 midterm elections, as Russia views this activity as an equitable response to perceived actions by Washington and an opportunity to both undermine US global standing and influence US decision-making," the report said.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The Mesa County DA sought the warrant this week after he said that Peters made an unauthorized trip, and he revoked her $25,000 cash bond. yPillow CEO Mike Lindell told Vice News that Peters is now "holed up" in a safe house.Getty Images, Mesa County An arrest warrant was issued for former Mesa County election clerk Tina Peters on Thursday. The Mesa County DA said that Peters made an unauthorized trip to Las Vegas. In Vegas, she spoke at a conference and signed a recount letter for the primary she lost. A Colorado judge issued an arrest warrant for pro-Trump former Mesa County election clerk Tina Peters after she violated her bond agreement by attending a law enforcement conference in Las Vegas, according to court documents.Mesa County District Attorney Daniel Rubinstein sought the warrant this week after he said that Peters violated the terms of her bond agreement; he also revoked her $25,000 cash bond.According to the warrant, Peters traveled without seeking authorization from the court to attend and speak at the Constitutional Sheriff's and Peace Officer's Association conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The DA said that they were partly tipped off because a video of the conference was streamed on MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's website Frankspeech.com."Looking at the website of the organization, they had a conference scheduled in Las Vegas at that time," Rubinstein said in the warrant. "DA Investigator Struwe has also now found a video on Frankspeech.com with the three-hour video from 7/12/2022 in Las Vegas of the conference. At the 2:27:50 second mark, Ms. Peters takes the stage."Peters also signed a notarized letter to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, demanding a recount of the Republican primary for Secretary of State that she lost weeks ago. The letter was signed in Nevada, the DA said."Ms. Peters is a gold-star mother with a love for public service and longstanding ties to her community and the State of Colorado," Peters' legal team said in a motion to quash the warrant, adding that Peters did not know she was barred from traveling to Vegas.Last year, Colorado District Judge Valerie J. Robison alleged that in March 2021 as a county clerk overseeing elections, Peters allowed an unauthorized consultant to access the county's voting machines, with one of her aides requesting that election-department cameras be turned off for two weeks — long enough to allow that unauthorized third party to make a "forensic image" of the hard drive used by Dominion vote-tabulating equipment.In March 2022, Tina Peters was indicted on 10 counts by a Mesa County grand jury related to her alleged role in the election data breach, according to the county's district attorney. Her aide, Belinda Knisley was indicted on six counts related to the breach.Peters was indicted on counts of attempting to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, identity theft, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty, and failing to comply with the secretary of state. Prosecutors are now seeking federal charges against Peters."Using legal muscle to indict political opponents during an election isn't new strategy, but it's easier to execute when you have a district attorney who despises President Trump and any constitutional conservative like myself who continues to demand all election evidence be made available to the public," Peters said in response to the March 2022 indictment.Peters pleaded not guilty to the charges.For two years in a row, Peters has been barred from performing clerk duties, and in June Peters lost in a Republican primary for the Colorado Secretary of State, which she made a trip to Mar-a-Lago for in May and campaigned for alongside Mike Lindell at times.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

A 2020 election worker described losing her "sense of security...all because a group of people starting with number 45 decided to scapegoat me." Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., hugs Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, a former Georgia election worker, after she testified as Ruby Freeman, mother of Moss, hugs Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.Chip Somodevilla/Pool Photo via AP State and local officials testified about a pressure campaign following the 2020 election. Trump and his allies tried to strongarm state officials and send fake electors to Washington. Two former Georgia election workers also detailed "horrible" threats and harassment they recieved. The House select committee investigating January 6 showcased in bracing detail how President Donald Trump and his allies pressured Republicans to overturn the election, leading to threats against both high-profile officials and regular workers. The committee's fourth hearing highlighted three Republican officials who found themselves on the receiving end of Trump's intense pressure campaign: Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia Secretary of State Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling.It also featured the testimony of Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, a rank-and-file local election worker from Fulton County whose life was upended by Trump's allies making her the center of their false accusations that the 2020 election in Georgia was rigged. "The point is this, Donald Trump did not care about the threats of violence," Rep. Liz Cheney said at the beginning of the hearing. "He did not condemn them, he made no effort to stop them." Rusty Bowers, Arizona state House Speaker, testifies before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)A top Arizona Republican threw cold water on Trump and Giuliani's claimsOn Tuesday, Trump preemptively sought to discredit Bowers before his testimony in a statement attacking Bowers as a "RINO" and said Bowers told him the 2020 election was rigged. But in powerful testimony, Bowers firmly rebuked Trump's claims and described how he stood up to an intense pressure campaign."Anywhere, anyone anytime has said that I said the election was rigged..that would not be true," Bowers testified. Bowers also detailed how Giuliani pressured him to hold hearings investigating the 2020 election, but failed to present any evidence that the election in Arizona was tainted by massive fraud or rigged. "I refused," Bowers said. "At that time, the circus had been brewing with lots of demonstrations both at the counting center, at the Capitol, and other places. And I didn't want to have that in the House." Bowers later said that Giuliani told him, "We have lots of theories, we just don't have the evidence." He recalled telling Giuliani in response, "You are asking me to do something that is contrary to my oath when I swore to the Constitution to uphold it. You're asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath."John Eastman, Trump's legal adviser, also pressured Bowers to go along with a plot to invalidate Arizona's election results, saying, "just do it and let the courts sort it out."The January 6 Committee displayed texts between an aide to Sen. Ron Johnson and an aide to Vice President Mike PenceAP Photo/Jacquelyn MartinAn outlandish plot to send Trump fake electors to Washington.The hearing also revealed new information about the scheme spearheaded by Giuliani and Eastman to assemble slates of unofficial Trump electors in states that voted for Biden. "Essentially, he turned the call over to Mr. Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result," RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel recalled in her deposition. The phony electors were not certified by government authority and had no legal weight or authority whatsoever. And several current and former Trump aides testified that the bulk of the White House's counsel's office thought the plan was unlawful. "We were just kind of useful idiots or rubes at that point," said former Trump staffer Robert Sinners in a deposition. "I'm angry, because I think in a sense no one really cared if people were potentially putting themselves in jeopardy." In Michigan, the unofficial slate of Trump electors even tried to hid in the state capitol overnight to meet and cast their votes. The hearing also documented the disorganized scramble to get the slates of electors to Pence."Freaking trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the senate President," Mark Jefferson, the executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party, wrote in a Jan 4, 2021, text message. "They're gonna call one of us to tell us just what the hell is going on." An aide to Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, one of the senators who objected to the election results, texted Vice President Mike Pence's legislative director the morning of January 6 attempting to arrange a handoff of an "alternate slate of electors for MI and WI." "Do not give that to him," the Pence aide, Chris Hodgson, replied. Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State, testifies as Gabe Sterling, Georgia Deputy Secretary of State, listens.AP Photo/Jacquelyn MartinTrump pressures Georgia election officials.Raffensperger said that he looked into Trump's claims that there were missing ballots in the Georgia vote count and found no evidence to support them."The numbers are the numbers and the numbers don't lie," he told the House select committee."We had many allegations and we investigated every single one of them." Trump went as far as to make acting US Attorney of Northern District of Georgia Bobby Christie investigate this matter. Christie later told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he found no evidence of voter fraud and dismissed the case, Raffensperger said.The committee played recordings of Raffensperger's calls with Trump where the former president pressured him to investigate election fraud. When Raffensperger pushed back and said there was no evidence, Trump then responded, "there's either two answers, dishonesty or incompetence."Raffensperger testified about how he and his family members were harassed by pro-Trump supporters, saying that people broke into his daughter-in-law's home and sent his wife threatening text messages. "I think sometimes, moments require you to stand up and just take the shots by doing your job. That's all we did," he said.Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, a former Georgia election worker, is comforted by her mother Ruby Freeman, right, as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol continues to reveal its findings of a year-long investigationAP Photo/Jacquelyn MartinA mother and daughter election worker duo speak out. Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, a rank-and-file local election worker from Fulton County recalled, in harrowing detail, receiving threatening messages against her and her mother in the aftermath of the Georgia vote count. Moss and mother Ruby Freeman, who worked as a temporary election worker in 2020, became the targets of a baseless conspiracy pushed by Trump and Giuliani claiming that election workers counting ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta committed fraud. "I've lost my name and I lost my reputation. I've lost my sense of security. All because a group of people starting with number 45 and his allies, Rudy Giuliani, decided to scapegoat me and my daughter Shaye," Freeman said.Moss said she no longer works in elections."I don't go to the grocery store at all. I haven't been anywhere at all. I gained about 60 pounds. Just don't do nothing anymore," Moss said. "I second-guess everything that I do. It's affected my life in a major way, every way. All because of lies." Freeman testified that as January 6, 2021, neared, she left her home for two months on the advice of the FBI."I felt horrible," she said. "I felt homeless. I can't believe this person has caused this much damage to me and my family to have to leave my home."Moss said a lot of the messages she received were "racist" and "painful." Her grandmother was also subjected to harassment. Moss recalled her grandmother calling her and telling her that people tried to push their way into her home and make a "citizen's arrest.""This woman is my everything I've never even heard her or seen her cry ever in my life and she called me screaming at the top of her lungs. She was just screaming, I didn't know what to do. I wasn't there. I just felt so helpless and so horrible," Moss said. "There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere," Freeman said in her deposition. "Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you? The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American, not target one. But he targeted me."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Greenwald: The Demented - And Selective - Game Of Instantly Blaming Political Opponents For Mass Shootings Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com, At a softball field in a Washington, DC suburb on June 14, 2017, a lone gunman used a rifle to indiscriminately spray bullets at members of the House GOP who had gathered for their usual Saturday morning practice for an upcoming charity game. The then-House Majority Whip, Rep. Steven Scalise (R-LA), was shot in the hip while standing on second base and almost died, spending six weeks in the hospital and undergoing multiple surgeries. Four other people were shot, including two members of the Capitol Police who were part of Scalise's security detail, a GOP staffer, and a Tyson Foods lobbyist. “He was hunting us at that point,” Rep. Mike Bishop (R-MI) said of the shooter, who attempted to murder as many people as he could while standing with his rifle behind the dugout. Buffalo Police on scene at a Tops Friendly Market on May 14, 2022 in Buffalo, New York. At least 10 people were killed after a mass shooting at the store with the shooter in police custody. (Photo by John Normile/Getty Images) The shooter died after engaging the police in a shootout. He was James T. Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old hard-core Democrat who — less than six months into the Trump presidency — had sought to kill GOP lawmakers based on his belief that Republicans were corrupt traitors, fascists, and Kremlin agents. The writings he left behind permitted little doubt that he was driven to kill by the relentless messaging he heard from his favorite cable host, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, and other virulently anti-Trump pundits, about the evils of the GOP. Indeed, immediately after arriving at the softball field, he asked several witnesses whether the people gathered "were Republicans or Democrats.” A CNN examination of his life revealed that “Hodgkinson's online presence was largely defined by his politics.” In particular, “his public Facebook posts date back to 2012 and are nearly all about his support for liberal politics.” He was particularly "passionate about tax hikes on the rich and universal health care.” NBC News explained that “when he got angry about politics, it was often directed against Republicans,” and acknowledged that “Hodgkinson said his favorite TV program was 'The Rachel Maddow Show' on MSNBC.” Indeed, his media diet was a non-stop barrage of vehement animosity toward Republicans: "His favorite television shows were listed as 'Real Time with Bill Maher;' 'The Rachel Maddow Show;' 'Democracy Now!’ and other left-leaning programs.” On the Senate floor, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) divulged that Hodgkinson was an ardent supporter of his and had even “apparently volunteered” for his campaign. A Sanders supporter told The Washington Post that “he campaigned for Bernie Sanders with Hodgkinson in Iowa.” The mass-shooter had a particular fondness for Maddow's nightly MSNBC show. In his many Letters to the Editor sent to the Belleville News-Democrat, reported New York Magazine, he “expressed support for President Obama, and declared his love for The Rachel Maddow Show". In one letter he heralded Maddow's nightly program as "one of my favorite TV shows.” While consuming this strident and increasingly rage-driven Trump-era, anti-GOP media diet, Hodgkinson “joined several anti-GOP Facebook groups, including ‘Terminate The Republican Party’; 'The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans’;, and 'Join The Resistance Worldwide!!'" Two of his consuming beliefs were that Trump-era Republicans were traitors to the United States and fascist white nationalists. In 2015, he had posted a cartoon depicting Scalise — the man he came very close to murdering — as speaking at a gathering of the KKK. Once Trump was inaugurated in early 2017, the mass shooter's online messaging began increasingly mirroring the more extreme anti-Trump and anti-GOP voices that did not just condemn the GOP's ideology but depicted them as grave threats to the Republic. In a March 22 Facebook post, Hodgkinson wrote: “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co." In February, he posted: “Republicans are the Taliban of the USA.” In one Facebook post just days before his shooting spree, Hodgkinson wrote: “I Want to Say Mr. President, for being an ass hole you are Truly the Biggest Ass Hole We Have Ever Had in the Oval Office.” As NBC News put it: “Hodgkinson’s Facebook postings portray him as stridently anti-Republican and anti-Trump.” Despite the fact that Hodgkinson was a fanatical fan of Maddow, Democracy Now host Amy Goodman, and Sanders, that the ideas and ideology motivating his shooting spree perfectly matched — and were likely shaped by — liberals of that cohort, and that the enemies whom he sought to kill were also the enemies of Maddow and her liberal comrades, nobody rational or decent sought to blame the MSNBC host, the Vermont Senator or anyone else whose political views matched Hodgkinson's for the grotesque violence he unleashed. The reason for that is clear and indisputable: as strident and extremist as she is, Maddow has never once encouraged any of her followers to engage in violence to advance her ideology, nor has she even hinted that a mass murder of the Republican traitors, fascists and Kremlin agents about whom she rants on a nightly basis to millions of people is a just solution. It would be madness to try to assign moral or political blame to them. If we were to create a framework in which prominent people were held responsible for any violence carried out in the name of an ideology they advocate, then nobody would be safe, given that all ideologies have their misfits, psychopaths, unhinged personality types, and extremists. And thus there was little to no attempt to hold Maddow or Sanders responsible for the violent acts of one of their most loyal adherents. The same is true of the spate of mass shootings and killings by self-described black nationalists over the last several years. Back in 2017, the left-wing group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) warned of the “Return of the Violent Black Nationalist.” In one incident, “Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed Dallas police officers during a peaceful protest against police brutality, killing five officers and wounding nine others.” Then, “ten days later, Gavin Eugene Long shot six officers, killing three, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.” They shared the same ideology, one which drove their murderous spree: Both Johnson and Long were reportedly motivated by their strong dislike of law enforcement, grievances against perceived white dominance, and the recent fatal police shootings of unarmed black men under questionable circumstances, specifically the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling of Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota . . . Needless to say, the ideas that motivated these two black nationalists to murder multiple people, including police officers, is part of a core ideology that is commonly heard in mainstream media venues, expressed by many if not most of the nation's most prominent liberals. Depicting the police as a white supremacist force eager to kill black people, “grievances against perceived white dominance,” and anger over “the white supremacism endemic in America’s system of governance from the country’s founding” are views that one routinely hears on MSNBC, CNN, from Democratic Party politicians, and in the op-ed pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. Yet virtually nobody sought to blame Chris Hayes, Joy Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Jamelle Bouie or New York Times op-ed writers for these shooting sprees. Indeed, no blame was assigned to anti-police liberal pundits whose view of American history is exactly the same as that of these two killers — even though they purposely sought to murder the same enemies whom those prominent liberals target. Nobody blamed those anti-police liberals for the same reason they did not blame Maddow and Sanders for Hodgkinson's shooting spree: there is a fundamental and necessary distinction between people who use words to express ideas and demonize perceived enemies, and those who decide to go randomly and indiscriminately murder in the name of that ideology. Since that 2017 warning from the SPLC, there have been many more murders in the name of this anti-police and anti-white-supremacist ideology of black nationalism. In June of last year, the ADL said it had “linked Othal Toreyanne Resheen Wallace, the man arrested and accused of fatally shooting Daytona Beach Officer Jason Raynor on June 23, to several extremist groups preaching Black nationalism." He had “participated in several events organized by the NFAC…best known for holding armed marches protesting racial inequality and police brutality.” He had a long history of citing and following prominent radical Black anti-police and anti-White ideologues." Also in June of last year, a 25-year-old man named Noah Green drove a car into a Capitol Hill Police Officer, killing him instantly. The New York Times reported that he follows black nationalist groups, while a former college teammate “recalled that Mr. Green would often talk to fellow players about strategies to save and invest, emphasizing the need to close the wealth gap between white and Black America.” Just last month, a self-identified black nationalist named Frank James went on a terrifying shooting spree in the New York City subway system that injured dozens. He had “posted material on social media linked to black identity extremist ideologies, including the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, BLM and an image of black nationalist cop-killer Micah Johnson.” Angie Speaks, the brilliant writer who voices the audio version of the articles for this Substack, reported in Newsweek that James had “posted prolifically on social media and hosted a YouTube channel where he expressed Black Nationalist leanings and racial grievances." In 2019, The New York Times reported that “an assailant involved in the prolonged firefight in Jersey City, N.J., that left six people dead, including one police officer, was linked on Wednesday to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement,” and had written “anti-police posts.” Most media outlets and liberal politicians correctly refused to assign blame to pundits and politicians who spew anti-police rhetoric, or who insist that the U.S. is a nation of white supremacy: the animating ideas of these murders. Yet in these cases, they go much further with their denialism: many deny that this ideology even exists at all. “The made-up 'Black Identity Extremist' label is the latest example in a history of harassing and discrediting Black activists who dare to use their voices to call out white supremacy,” claimed the ACLU in 2019. PBS quoted a lawyer for an advocacy group as saying: “We're deeply concerned about the FBI's 'black identity extremist' designation. This is mere distraction from the very real threat of white supremacy...There is no such thing as black identity extremism.” The same year, The Intercept published an article headlined “The Strange Tale of the FBI’s Fictional ‘Black Identity Extremism' Movement,” which claimed over and over that there is no such thing as black extremism and that any attempt to ascribe violence to this ideology is a lie invented by those seeking to hide the dangers of white supremacy. It is virtually impossible to find any ideology on any part of the political spectrum that has not spawned senseless violence and mass murder by adherents. “The suspected killer of Dutch maverick politician Pim Fortuyn had environmentalist propaganda and ammunition at his home,” reported CBS News about the assassin, Volkert van der Graaf. Van der Graaf was a passionate animal rights and environmental activist who admitted “he killed the controversial right-wing leader because he considered him a danger to society.” Van der Graaf was particularly angry about what he believed was Fortuyn's anti-Muslim rhetoric. As a result, “some supporters of Fortuyn had blamed Green party leader Paul Rosenmoeller for "demonizing Fortuyn before he was gunned down in May just before general elections.” In other words, simply because the Green Party leader was highly critical of Fortuyn's ideology, some opportunistic Dutch politicians sought absurdly to blame him for Fortuyn's murder by Van der Graaf. Sound familiar? During the BLM and Antifa protests and riots of 2020, an Antifa supporter, Michael Reinoehl, was the leading suspect in the murder of a Trump supporter, Aaron J. Danielson, as he rode in a truck (Reinoehl himself was then killed by federal agents before being arrested in what appeared to be a deliberate extra-judicial execution, though an investigation cleared them of wrongdoing, as typically happens when federal agents are involved). In 2016, The New York Times reported that “the heavily armed sniper who gunned down police officers in downtown Dallas, leaving five of them dead, specifically set out to kill as many white officers as he could, officials said Friday.” The Paper of Record noted that many believed that anti-police protests would eventually lead to violent attacks on police officers: it “was the kind of retaliatory violence that people have feared through two years of protests around the country against deaths in police custody.” Then there are the murders carried out in the name of various religions. For the last three decades at least, debates have been raging about what level of responsibility, if any, should be assigned to radical Muslim preachers or Muslim politicians when individuals carry out atrocities and murders in the name of Islam. Liberals insist — correctly, in my view — that it is irresponsible and unfair to blame non-violent Muslims who preach radical versions of religious or political Islam for those who carry out violence in the name of those doctrines. Similar debates are heard with regard to Jewish extremists, such as the Israeli-American doctor Baruch Goldstein who “opened fire in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, killing 29 Muslim worshippers.” Many insist that the radical anti-Muslim speech of Israeli extremists is to blame, while others deny that there is any such thing as “Jewish terrorism” and that all blames lies solely with the individual who decided to resort to violence. To be sure, there have been a large number of murders and other atrocities carried out in U.S. and the West generally in the name of right-wing ideologies, in the name of white supremacy, in the name of white nationalism. The difference, though, is glaring: when murders are carried out in the name of liberal ideology, there is a rational and restrained refusal to blame liberal pundits and politicians who advocate the ideology that animated those killings. Yet when killings are carried out in the name of right-wing ideologies despised by the corporate press and mainstream pundits (or ideologies that they falsely associate with conservatism), they instantly leap to lay blame at the feet of their conservative political opponents who, despite never having advocated or even implied the need for violence, are nonetheless accused of bearing guilt for the violence — often before anything is known about the killers or their motives. In general, it is widely understood that liberal pundits and politicians are not to blame, at all, when murders are carried out in the name of the causes they support or against the enemies they routinely condemn. That is because, in such cases, we apply the rational framework that someone who does not advocate violence is not responsible for the violent acts of one's followers and fans who kill in the name of that person's ideas. Indeed, this perfectly sensible principle was enshrined by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark 1982 unanimous free speech ruling in Claiborne v. NAACP. That case arose out of efforts by the State of Mississippi to hold leaders of the local NAACP chapter legally liable for violence carried out by NAACP members on the ground that the leaders’ inflammatory and rage-driven speeches had “incited” and “provoked” their followers to burn white-owned stores and other stores ignoring their boycott to the ground. In ruling in favor of the NAACP, the Court stressed the crucial difference between those who peacefully advocate ideas and ideologies, even if they do so with virulence and anger (such as NAACP leaders), and those who are “inspired” by those speeches to commit violence to advance that cause. “To impose liability without a finding that the NAACP authorized — either actually or apparently — or ratified unlawful conduct would impermissibly burden the rights of political association that are protected by the First Amendment,” ruled the Court. This principle is not only a jurisprudential or constitutional one. It is also a rational one. Those who express ideas without advocating violence are not and cannot fairly be held responsible for those who decide to pick up arms in the name of those ideas, even if — as in the case of James Hodgkinson — we know for certain that the murderer listened closely to and was influenced by people like Rachel Maddow and Bernie Sanders. In such cases, we understand that it is madness, and deeply unfair, to exploit heinous murders to lay blame for the violence and killings on the doorsteps of our political adversaries. But when a revolting murder spree is carried out in the name of right-wing ideas (or ideas perceived by the corporate press to be right-wing), everything changes — instantly and completely. In such cases, often before anything is known about the murderer — indeed, literally before the corpses are even removed from the ground where they lie — there is a coordinated effort to declare that anyone who holds any views in common with the murderer has “blood on their hands” and is essentially a co-conspirator in the massacre. A very vivid and particularly gruesome display of this demented game was on display on Saturday night after a white 18-year-old, Payton Gendron, purposely targeted a part of Buffalo with a substantial black population. He entered a supermarket he knew was frequented largely by black customers and shot everyone he found, killing 10 people, most of them black. A lengthy, 180-page manifesto he left behind was filled with a wide variety of eclectic political views and ideologies. In that manifesto, Gendron described himself as a "left-wing authoritarian” and “populist” (“On the political compass I fall in the mild-moderate authoritarian left category, and I would prefer to be called a populist”). He heaped praise on an article in the socialist magazine Jacobin for its view that cryptocurrency and Bitcoin are fraudulent scams. He spoke passionately of the centrality and necessity of environmentalism, and lamented that “the state [has] long since heavily lost to its corporate backers.” He ranted against “corporate profits and the ever increasing wealth of the 1% that exploit the people for their own benefit.” And he not only vehemently rejected any admiration for political conservatism but made clear that he viewed it as an enemy to his agenda: “conservatism is corporatism in disguise, I want no part of it.” But by far the overarching and dominant theme of his worldview — the ideology that he repeatedly emphasized was the animating cause of his murder spree — was his anger and fear that white people, which he defines as those of European descent, were being eradicated by a combination of low birth rates and mass immigration. He repeatedly self-identified as a "racist” and expressed admiration for fascism as a solution. His treatise borrowed heavily from, and at times outright plagiarized, large sections of the manifesto left behind by Brenton Tarrant, the 29-year-old Australian who in 2019 murdered 51 people, mostly Muslims, at two mosques in New Zealand. Gendron's manifesto included a long list of websites and individuals who influenced his thinking, but made clear that it was Tarrant who was his primary inspiration. Other than extensive anti-Semitic sections which insisted that Jews are behind most of the world's powerful institutions and accompanying problems, it was Tarrant's deep concern about what he perceived is the disappearance of white people that was also Gendron's principal cause: If there’s one thing I want you to get from these writings, it’s that White birth rates must change. Everyday the White population becomes fewer in number. To maintain a population the people must achieve a birth rate that reaches replacement fertility levels, in the western world that is about 2.06 births per woman…. In 2050, despite the ongoing effect of sub-replacement fertility, the population figures show that the population does not decrease inline with the sub-replacement fertility levels, but actually maintains and, even in many White nations, rapidly increases. All through immigration. This is ethnic replacement. This is cultural replacement. This is racial replacement. This is WHITE GENOCIDE. Within literally an hour of the news of this murder spree in Buffalo — far too little time for anyone to have even carefully read all or most of Gendron's manifesto, and with very little known about his life or activities — much of the corporate press and liberal pundit class united to reveal the real culprit, the actual guilty party, behind this murder spree: Fox News host Tucker Carlson. So immediate and unified was this guilty verdict of mob justice that Carlson's name trended all night on Twitter along with Buffalo and Gendron. Twitter trending topics, May 14, 2022 The examples of liberal pundits instantly blaming Carlson for this murder are far too numerous to comprehensively cite. “Literally everyone warned Fox News and Tucker Carlson that this would happen and they fucking laughed and went harder,” decreed Andrew Lawrence of the incomparably sleazy and dishonest group Media Matters, spawned by ultimate sleaze-merchant David Brock. “The Buffalo shooter… subscribed to the Great Replacement theory touted by conservative elites like Tucker Carlson and believed by nearly half of GOP voters,” claimed The Washington Post's Emmanuel Felton. “See if you can tell the difference between [Gerdon's manifesto on 'white Replacement’] and standard fare on the Tucker Carlson show,” said Georgetown Professor Don Moynihan. “The racist massacre in Buffalo rest [sic] at the feet of Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the GOP,” decreed Hollywood's nepotism prince Rob Reiner. The shooter was inspired by “a white nationalist conspiracy theory that Tucker Carlson has defended on his show,” was the verdict of The Huffington Post's Philip Lewis less than six hours after the shooting spree began. And on and on. That Carlson was primarily responsible for the ten dead people in Buffalo was asserted despite the fact that there was no indication that Gendron even knew who Carlson was, that he had ever watched his show, that he was influenced by him in any way, or that he admired or even liked the Fox host. Indeed, in the long list of people and places which Gendron cited as important influences on him — “Brenton Tarrant, [El Paso shooter] Patrick Crusius, [California Jewish community center killer], John Earnest, [Norwegian mass murderer] Anders Breivik, [Charleston black church murderer] Dylann Roof, etc.” — nowhere does he even allude to let alone mention any Fox News host or Carlson. To the contrary, Gendron explicitly describes his contempt for political conservatism. In a section entitled “CONSERVATISM IS DEAD, THANK GOD,” he wrote: "Not a thing has been conserved other than corporate profits and the ever increasing wealth of the 1% that exploit the people for their own benefit. Conservatism is dead. Thank god. Now let us bury it and move on to something of worth.” In this hated of conservatism, he copied his hero Brenton Tarrant, who also wrote that “conservatism is corporatism in disguise, I want no part of it,” adding about conservatives: They don’t even BELIEVE in the race, they don’t even have the gall to say race exists. And above all they don’t even care if it does. It’s profit, and profit alone that drives them, all else is secondary. The notion of a racial future or destiny is as foreign to them as social responsibilities. So desperate and uncontrolled was this ghoulish attempt to blame Carlson for the Buffalo shootings that my email inbox and social media feeds were festering with various liberal pundits demanding to know why I had not yet manifested my views of this shooting — as though it is advisable or even possible to formulate definitive opinions about a complex mass murder spree that had just taken place less than five hours before. “Still working on your talking points to defend your buddy Tucker or are you holding off on trying out your deflections until the bodies get cold?,” wrote a pundit named Jonathan Katz at 6:46 pm ET on Saturday night in a highly representative demand — just four hours after the shooter fired his first shot. Demands to assert definitive opinions about who — other than the killer — is to blame for a mass murder spree just hours after it happened can be called many things; "journalistic” and "responsible” are not among them. As it happened, I was on an overnight international flight on Saturday and into Sunday morning; I deeply apologize for my failure to monitor and speak on Twitter twenty-four hours a day. But even if I had not been 40,000 feet in the air, what kind of primitive and despicably opportunistic mindset is required not only to opine so definitively about how your political opponents are guilty of a heinous crime before the corpses are even taken away, but to demand that everyone else do so as well? In fact, Katz was particularly adamant that I opine not just on the killings but on the list of pundits I thought should be declared guilty before, in his soulless words, “the bodies get cold” — meaning that I must speak out without bothering to take the time to try to understand the basic facts about the killer and the shootings before heaping blame on a wide range of people who had no apparent involvement. But this is exactly the morally sick and exploitative liberal mentality that drives the discourse each time one of these shooting sprees happen. Rachel Maddow had far more known connections to Scalise's shooter James Hodgkinson than Carlson has to Gendron. After all, as Maddow herself acknowledged, Hodgkinson was a fan of her show and had expressed his love and admiration for her. His animating views and ideology tracked hers perfectly, with essentially no deviation. And yet — despite this ample evidence that he was influenced by her — it would never occur to me to blame Maddow for Hodgkinson's shooting spree because doing so would be completely demented, since Maddow never told or suggested to anyone that they go out and shoot the political enemies she was depicting as traitors, Kremlin agents, plotters to overthrow American democracy and replace it with a fascist dictatorship, and grave menaces to civil rights and basic freedom. The attempt to blame Carlson for the Buffalo shootings depended entirely on one claim: Carlson has previously talked about and defended the view that immigration is a scheme to “replace” Americans, and this same view was central to Gendron's ideology. Again, even if this were true, it would amount to nothing more than a claim than the shooter shared key views with Carlson and other conservative pundits — exactly as Hodgkinson shared core views with Maddow and Sanders, or the numerous murderers who killed in the name of black nationalism shared the same views on the police and American history as any number of MSNBC hosts and Democratic Party politicians, or as Pim Fortuyn's killer shared core views with animal rights activists and defenders of Muslim equality (including me). But nobody is willing to apply such a framework consistently because it converts everyone with strong political views into murderers, or at least being guilty of inciting murder. But all bets are off — all such principles or moral and logical reasoning are dispensed with — when an act of violence can be pinned on the political enemies of liberals. If a homicidal maniac kills an abortion doctor, then all peaceful pro-life activists are blamed. If an LGBT citizen is killed, then anyone who shares the views that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had until 2012 about marriage equality is blamed. If a police officer unjustifiably kills a black citizen, all police supporters or those who dissent from liberal orthodoxy on racial politics are decreed guilty. But liberals are never at fault when right-wing politicians are murdered, or police officers are hunted and gunned down by police opponents, or an anti-abortion group is targeted with firebombing and arson, as just happened in Wisconsin, or radical Muslims engage in random acts of violence. By definition, "moral reasoning" that is applied only in one direction has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with crass, exploitative opportunism. Though it does not actually matter for purposes of assigning blame, it is utterly false to claim that Carlson's ideology — including on “replacement” — is the same as or even related to the views expressed by the killers in Buffalo or New Zealand. Indeed, in key respects, they are opposites. Both Tarrant and Gendron targeted citizens of the countries in which they carried out their murder spree. They justified doing so on the ground that any non-white citizen is automatically an "invader," regardless of how long they have been in the country or how much legal status they have. “It would have eased me if I knew all the blacks I would be killing were criminals or future criminals, but then I realized all black people are replacers just by existing in White countries,” Gendron wrote. To claim that Carlson ever said anything remotely like this or believes it is just an outright lie. Indeed, with great frequency, Carlson says that the priority of the U.S. Government should be protection of and concern for American citizens of all races. Tarrant and Gendron believe and explicitly say that any non-white citizen of a European country is automatically an “invader” who must be killed and/or deported to turn the country all-white. Carlson believes the exact opposite: that the proper citizenry of the United States is multi-racial and that Black Americans and Latin Americans and Asian-Americans are every bit as much U.S. citizens, with all of the same claims to rights and protections, as every other American citizen. His anti-immigration and "replacement” argument is aimed at the idea — one that had been long mainstream on the left until about a decade ago — that large, uncontrolled immigration harms American citizens who are already here. There is no racial hierarchy in Carlson's view of American citizenship and to claim that there is is nothing short of a defamatory lie. But even if these liberal smear artists were telling the truth, and Carlson's view of immigration and “replacement” were similar or even precisely identical to Gendron's, one could certainly say that Carlson holds immoral and despicable views. But he would still no more carry blame for the Buffalo murders than liberal pundits have blood on their hands for countless massacres carried out in the name of political causes they support and theories they espouse, whether it be animus toward the police or anti-imperialism or opposition to Israeli occupation of the West Bank or the belief that the United States is a fundamentally racist country or the view that the GOP is a fascist menace to all things decent. The distinction between peaceful advocacy even of noxious ideas and those who engage in violence in the name of such ideas is fundamental to notions of fairness, justice and the ability to speak freely. But if you really want to claim that a public figure has "blood on their hands" every time someone murders in the name of ideas and ideologies they support, then the list of people you should be accusing of murder is a very, very long one indeed. To support the independent journalism we are doing here, please subscribe, obtain a gift subscription for others and/or share the article Tyler Durden Sun, 05/15/2022 - 18:30.....»»

Trump Sues Hillary Clinton, Says She 'Maliciously Conspired' To Weave Collusion Conspiracy Theory Former US President Donald Trump sued Hillary Clinton and several other Democrats on Thursday, alleging they attempted to rig the 2016 US presidential election by fabricating a conspiracy theory tying his campaign to Russia. "Acting in concert, the Defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty," reads the lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Florida. Remember this? Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank. pic.twitter.com/8f8n9xMzUU — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 1, 2016 Meanwhile, a flashback: Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations.com, A Hillary Clinton campaign operation to plant a false rumor about Donald Trump setting up a “secret hotline” to Moscow through a Russian bank was much broader than known and involved multiple U.S. agencies, according to declassified documents and sources briefed on an ongoing criminal investigation of the scheme. In addition to the FBI, the 2016 Clinton campaign tried to convince the Obama administration’s State Department, Justice Department and Central Intelligence Agency to look into the hoax, and continued pressing the issue even after Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.The goal was to trigger federal investigative activity targeting her Republican rival and leak the damaging information to the media. “The Clinton machine flooded the FBI with pressure from a number of angles until investigations of Trump were opened and reopened,” said one of the briefed sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive law enforcement matter. "The deception was wide-ranging." Michael Sussmann: The indicted former Clinton campaign attorney wasn't the only one feeding the bogus Alfa Bank story to the feds. perkinscoie.com Special Counsel John Durham outlined the FBI part of the scheme in a felony indictment of Michael Sussmann. The former Clinton campaign lawyer was charged last month with making a false statement to the former general counsel of the FBI when he claimed he was not working “for any client” in bringing to the FBI’s attention allegations of a secret channel of communication between computer servers in Trump Tower and the Alfa Bank in Russia. According to the indictment, Sussmann was in fact acting on behalf of clients including the Clinton campaign, and an unnamed tech executive who RCI has previously reported is Rodney L. Joffe, a regular adviser to the Biden White House on cybersecurity and infrastructure policies. Internal emails reveal the Clinton operatives knew the links they made between Trump and Russia were “weak,” even describing them as a “red herring,” but fed them to investigators anyway. The Sussmann indictment revealed the doubts of those developing the Alfa Bank story. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia After Sussmann’s meeting with the FBI in September 2016, the Clinton campaign approached the State Department the following month with the same lead, this time using paid Clinton campaign subcontractor Christopher Steele to feed the rumors. A former British intelligence officer, Steele was offered as a reliable source to help corroborate the rumors. On Oct. 11, 2016, Steele gave his contact at Foggy Bottom documents alleging that a supposed hidden server at Trump Tower was pinging Moscow. Christopher Steele: Author of the debunked dossier passed the Alfa Bank story to the State Department, which passed it along to FBI agent Peter Strzok. (Aaron Chown/PA FILE via AP) Two days later, a State official who previously worked under former secretary Clinton funneled the information to the FBI’s then-top Eurasia/Russia counterintelligence official, Stephen Laycock, according to recently declassified notes and testimony. Laycock, in turn, forwarded the information to Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who led the investigation of Trump and his campaign and had just weeks earlier texted a bureau lawyer, “We’ll stop [Trump from being elected].” "I informed Peter Strzok and another supervisor,” Laycock testified last year in a closed-door Senate hearing. Telephone: After Steele fed the Alfa Bank story to State, it was passed to the FBI’s then-top Eurasia/Russia counterintelligence official, Stephen Laycock (left), who in turn passed it on to lead FBI agent on Trump-Russia, Peter Strzok (right). Facebook/Twitter Steele, who later confessed he was “desperate” to defeat Trump, was the author of the debunked dossier claiming Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election. He even misspelled the name of the Russian bank as “Alpha.” Still, the FBI took his rumors seriously enough to interview tech vendors working for the Trump Organization and obtain warrants to search Trump Tower servers. Within days of receiving the State Department tip, Strzok also used Steele’s dossier to secure a wiretap on Trump adviser Carter Page. Clinton foreign policy adviser and current National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan would put out a written statement trumpeting the Trump-Alfa Bank story, which was shared by then-candidate Clinton on Oct. 31, 2016, after Slate reported on it. Fusion GPS, the Washington opposition-research group that worked for the Clinton campaign as a paid agent, and helped gather dirt on Alfa Bank and draft the materials Sussmann would later submit to the FBI, reportedly pressed Slate to publish the story by the account of its author, journalist Franklin Foer. The Clinton campaign played up the Trump-Alfa Bank story on the eve of the 2016 election. Twitter/@HillaryClinton “This was a highly sophisticated operation using enablers in both the media and federal agencies,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told RealClearInvestigations. The Clinton campaign did not let up even after Trump won the election. In mid-November 2016, it enlisted top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr – whose wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS – to add credibility to the Alfa rumors. That month, Ohr advised the FBI that Steele had told him that the Alfa Bank server was a link to the Trump campaign. Then in early December, Ohr met with the FBI case supervisor who worked for Strzok at least twice. Declassified notes and other records show that during those meetings, Ohr provided him with thumb drives he had received from paid Clinton opposition researcher and Fusion GPS co-founder, Glenn Simpson, and Ohr’s wife and Simpson’s colleague, Nellie. Quoting his Clinton sources, Ohr insisted the alleged backdoor computer channel between Trump and Alfa was real. Bruce Ohr: The Justice Department official -- linked to Clinton opposition research firm Fusion GPS through his wife Nellie, a Fusion employee -- brought the firm's arguments and materials to the FBI. The Global Initiative The FBI spent months investigating the claim, eventually dismissing it as baseless. After the FBI closed the case, Sussmann turned to the nation’s top intelligence agency for assistance, as RCI first reported. In December 2016, Sussmann called then-CIA Director John Brennan’s general counsel – Caroline Krass – to set up a meeting to brief her about the same Alfa Bank rumors. Krass expressed interest in the tip. Then in early February 2017, officials from her office formally sat down with Sussmann for more than an hour to discuss the Trump-Russian bank rumors. Sussmann provided them updated versions of the materials he had handed off to the FBI. Caroline Krass: General counsel to then-CIA Director John Brennan welcomed Sussmann's pitch of the Alfa Bank story, which reportedly passed from the CIA to FBI. CIA/Wikipedia The CIA, in turn, referred the rumors to an FBI liaison for further investigation, according to the sources briefed on his case. Strzok was the lead FBI liaison to the CIA at the time. Among the documents Durham has obtained is a CIA memo memorializing the meeting with Sussmann, according to the sources. In his grand jury indictment, Durham accused Sussmann of also misleading the CIA, which he referred to only as “Agency-2.” The special counsel alleges that Sussmann, as he did when meeting with an FBI official, had also failed to inform contacts at Langley that he was representing a client – in the latter case specifically Joffe – tied to the Clinton campaign operation and who had been promised a high-level job in a Clinton administration. Billing the Democrat’s campaign for his work on the “confidential project," Sussmann recruited Joffe and a team of federal computer contractors to mine proprietary databases containing vast quantities of sensitive, nonpublic Internet data for possible dirt on Trump and his advisers. In a new court document filed last week, Durham revealed his team has obtained more than 80,000 pages of documents in response to grand jury subpoenas issued to more than 15 targets and witnesses, including the computer contractors. Among others receiving subpoenas: political organizations, private firms, tech companies and other entities, including a major university — Georgia Tech — which allegedly participated in the Clinton conspiracy as a Pentagon contractor. Some witnesses have been granted immunity and are cooperating with prosecutors, the sources close to the probe said. Jonathan Turley: "One would expect a CIA official to express reluctance in an investigation that would have a largely domestic focus," says the law professor. CNN “While Sussmann may have hidden his work for the Clinton campaign, this was obviously a useful attack on Trump,” Turley said. “One would expect a CIA official to express reluctance in an investigation that would have a largely domestic focus. But as with the FBI, the Clinton campaign found eager officials to move on any such allegation.” The CIA is largely barred from collecting information inside the United States or on American citizens.“The CIA has no business involving itself in a domestic political issue,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told RCI. “The evidence suggests the primary purpose of the meeting was political." Fitton said his watchdog group has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA demanding all records generated from the contacts Sussmann had with the agency in December 2016 and February 2017. The CIA did not return requests for comment.For good measure, old Clinton hands tried another pressure point. In early February 2017, Clinton's foreign policy adviser Sullivan huddled with Fusion GPS's Simpson and Daniel Jones, an FBI analyst-turned-Democrat-operative, to reboot the same smear campaign against Trump. (As RCI previously reported, Sullivan, who spearheaded the campaign's effort to promote the narrative of a disturbing Trump-Russia relationship via the Alfa Bank story, is under scrutiny for possibly lying to Congress about his role in the operation.) Jones, in turn, reached out to his former colleagues at the FBI, who reopened the investigation into the old allegations of a cyber-link between Trump and Alfa Bank. Jake Sullivan played a pivotal role in the Alfa Bank story as 2016 Clinton foreign policy adviser. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File The next month, acting on Jones’ recycled tip, FBI agents visited the offices of the Pennsylvania company that housed the Trump server, which was actually administered by a third-party hotel promotions firm – Cendyn, based in Florida. But their second investigation proved to be another dead end. The sinister communications Jones claimed were flowing between an alleged Trump server and Alfa Bank were found to be innocuous marketing emails. In other words, spam. Sources say it is odd that FBI headquarters continued to pursue the allegations, because internal FBI communications reveal that the bureau’s own cyber sleuths had pooh-poohed them within days of Sussmann’s briefing, RCI has learned. Strzok himself had been briefed on that assessment of the materials Sussman dropped off at headquarters on Sept. 19, 2016. In fact, in a Sept. 23, 2016, internal message to Strzok, an FBI official relayed his preliminary findings following an interview with Cendyn, the Florida marketing firm that managed the alleged Trump server.“Followed up this morning with Central Dynamics [Cendyn] who confirmed that the mail1.trump-email.com domain is an old domain that was set up in approximately 2009 when they were doing business with the Trump Organization that was never used,” according to the message. Reacting to the Durham indictment, Strzok recently tried to distance himself from the Alfa scandal, insisting in a Lawfare blog: “I had a minor role in the events in question, insofar as I transferred the material Sussman gave to Jim Baker, the FBI’s general counsel at the time, to the personnel who ultimately supervised and looked into the allegations.” Echoing other critics, Strzok complained that Durham – who originally was tapped to investigate the origins of the Russia “collusion” investigation by Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr – is conducting a partisan witch hunt on behalf of Trump. Strzok's claims notwithstanding, Barr's successor, the President Biden-nominated Attorney General Merrick Garland, testified last week that he has renewed funding and staffing for Durham’s far-reaching investigation for the next fiscal year. “[Y]ou can readily assume his budget has been approved,” Garland assured Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee.   Tyler Durden Thu, 03/24/2022 - 14:20.....»»

Navy Veteran, 66, Lives An 'American Horror Story' Since His Arrest On Jan. 6 Seditious-Conspiracy Charge Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times, “Abba, Father! Please don’t let them murder my wife!” After more than two decades in the U.S. Navy and assignments around the world, Thomas E. Caldwell thought he knew the meaning of horror. That all changed in the predawn hours of Jan. 19, 2021. Minutes after being jostled awake, Caldwell found himself outside in the freezing cold in his undershorts and a T-shirt. In handcuffs attached to a belly chain, he was dragged across the lawn by FBI agents and thrown onto the hood of a government sedan. Caldwell looked back at the porch of his farmhouse and saw Sharon, his wife of 22 years, standing in her nightgown, with arms extended. She clutched a sock in each hand. Laser dots appeared on her face and chest, beamed from the carbine barrels of an FBI SWAT team. In an instant, Caldwell saw it all, just a finger twitch from unspeakable tragedy. “That was moral terror,” the white-haired 66-year-old Caldwell told The Epoch Times. “I would rather that they had shot me between the eyes than to threaten her like that.” “I will never forget that image, because she looked like an angel in a white nightshirt, standing in her bare feet on that cold concrete, with her arms extended to her side in compliance to them,” Caldwell recalled, choking back tears. “That was the moment I learned what real horror was,” he said. “Because I’m looking at that and I said, ‘Abba, Father! Please don’t let them murder my wife! Please don’t let them kill my wife!’ ” ‘The Lowest Point in My Life’ Life over the past 14 months has been full of challenges, tragedy, and miracles for the retired Navy intelligence officer from Berryville, Va. His trip to Washington D.C. to see President Donald Trump on Jan. 6 morphed from a patriotic outing with his wife into an FBI raid, 53 days in jail, near bankruptcy, and a federal indictment accusing him of seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging duties, and tampering with a document or proceeding—aiding and abetting. Left: Lieutenant Commander Thomas E. Caldwell aboard the guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG 62) as it leaves San Diego in 1989. Right: Caldwell aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68). (Courtesy of Sharon Caldwell) Prosecutors accuse him of working with members of the Oath Keepers to prevent Congress from certifying the Electoral College votes from the 2020 presidential election. Caldwell allegedly recommended a hotel for members of an Oath Keepers “Quick Reaction Force” that was to be stationed near Washington to aid other Oath Keepers attacking at the Capitol. Prosecutors said Caldwell asked his contacts for help securing boats that could be used to ferry men and weapons across the Potomac River. “Can’t believe I just thought of this: how many people either in the militia or not (who are still supportive of our efforts to save the Republic) have a boat on a trailer that coud (sic) handle a Potomac crossing?” Caldwell wrote in one message, according to the criminal complaint. “If we had someone standing by at a dock ramp (one near the Pentagon for sure) we could have our Quick Response Team with the heavy weapons standing by, quickly load them and ferry them across the river to our waiting arms…” Caldwell says federal prosecutors have gotten it badly wrong, mixing up or intentionally twisting bluster among retired military men into some kind of sinister conspiracy. “I have now reviewed mountains of messages, photos, etc. in the huge volume of discovery provided by the government in this case, and I have not seen one iota of evidence that anyone had a plan or an intention to invade the Capitol, or to stop the peaceful transition of the Presidency, or to do anything of an unlawful nature,” he said. “My personal intentions related to January 6 were to hear President Trump and enjoy a safe and peaceful day with my wife and other American citizens.” Caldwell plans to go to trial in search of exoneration and restoration of his reputation. His trial was scheduled to begin July 11 in U.S. District Court in Washington, but it now appears the date will be moved back to Sept. 26. Defense attorneys are working through terabytes of evidence, including more than 24,000 video files turned over by the Department of Justice. “A lot of the things that they’re saying are horrible and seditious are mocking and jibing and poking fun with friends—in private conversations—sometimes was one person in a text message, or two people,” he said. “In fact, some of these things are with guys that are 75 miles away in Virginia, who are at their farms, drunk as lords, as they say, watching stuff on TV.” Thomas and Sharon Caldwell on their farm, now empty after they sold their animals and equipment to pay legal bills, in Berryville, Va., on March 19, 2022. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) A Farm for Freedom Caldwell’s legal fight has already come at a steep price. The Caldwells sold their farm equipment and animals to help pay legal bills. He worries his multi-generation Shenandoah Valley farm will soon be lost, and has turned to internet crowd-funding for help. Through it all, the physical and psychological assault on his family that brisk morning is what sticks with him. He has difficulty talking about seeing his wife literally in the crosshairs of the FBI. “I will never forget it. It is seared into my memory. In my nightmares, it plays again and again and again,” Caldwell said. “Not them kicking me; it’s that image. It is the lowest point in my life. And yet, it might be the greatest miracle of my life that she was spared.” As he stood on the windswept porch staring into a sea of what looked like klieg lights, he was dumbfounded at the combat-strength force arrayed against him and his wife. An armored vehicle with a battering ram stood ready to punch through the side of the house. Agents in full tactical gear lit Caldwell up like a Christmas tree with the piercing laser beams from their rifle sights. He figured they were fully automatic M4 carbines aimed at his head and center mass. After throwing him down on the car hood, Caldwell said, one of the agents kneed him hard in the small of the back, right where metal hardware remained from surgeries. Agents put him in the back of a car, where he sat wondering if Sharon was still alive. Thomas Caldwell recounts the FBI raid as Sharon stands at the spot where laser dots appeared on her face and chest from the carbine barrels of an FBI SWAT team, at their home in Berryville, Va., on March 19, 2022. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) Agents used a handheld battering ram to smash their way into the stand-alone garage where Caldwell used to store his 1963 Ford Thunderbird convertible. The T-Bird is gone, sold to pay for his legal defense. Agents broke into the barn, ripped things off the walls, and then “ransacked the house,” Caldwell said. After a while, Caldwell was taken back into his home and questioned. He spent two and a half hours explaining his trip to the Capitol, how he was not now, nor had ever been, a member of the Oath Keepers. He said there were lots of assumptions behind the questions, but few facts. “I had asked them five separate times, ‘What am I being charged with? What am I being charged with?’ They finally said, ‘Trespassing.’ I said, ‘Are you out of your mind? You come here and point guns in my wife’s face for trespassing? Where am I supposed to have trespassed?’ They said, ‘Well, you went into the Capitol.’” As it turns out, Caldwell never went into the Capitol. After Trump’s speech at the Ellipse was finished, he and Sharon slowly made their way to the Capitol grounds. Trump told supporters to peacefully go to the Capitol, so the Caldwells thought perhaps Trump was going to make remarks there. They got as far as the Peace Monument before Caldwell had to sit. He said his legs and back were causing terrible pain. So they spent about an hour snapping photos, chatting with the crowd, and admiring the 44-foot-high Carrara marble monument set on a Maine blue granite base. ‘You Can’t Believe the View!’ Reports started to trickle down the 300-some yards from the West Front of the Capitol, where the president-elect takes the oath of office every four years. “People were up there and they were taking selfies and folks were coming down (by the Peace Monument) saying, ‘You can’t believe the view!’” Caldwell said. The Caldwells wanted to see for themselves. They slowly made their way up the stairs, with Tom pressing his hip against the railing for support. They walked through the giant scaffolding set up for inauguration, up near the platform where so many famous speeches have been made. “We did go up on … the inauguration balcony and we took a selfie,” Caldwell said. “Again, no police saying, ‘Don’t do it.’ No sign saying, ‘Don’t do it.’ And a crush of people doing it. And so you might say, ‘Well, maybe you shouldn’t have done that.’ Well, maybe so, but it didn’t seem like there was any deterrent to it at all.” Tom and Sharon Caldwell listened to President Donald Trump’s speech from outside the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021. (Courtesy of Sharon Caldwell) Caldwell said he did not notice any rioting or violence while at the West Front of the Capitol. After a while, the couple began the trek back down toward the Peace Monument. After a rest, they continued the walk up Constitution Avenue to their car. By then, reports were circulating that Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a curfew for that night due to events at the Capitol, just as Caldwell was near his vehicle. Caldwell said despite the contention in federal charging documents, he is not a member of the Oath Keepers, was never recruited for the group, and had no plans to join. He knows veterans who are Oath Keepers. His private text messages with friends were twisted into something they were not, he said. He told the lead FBI agent that morning that his opinions and speech were the real targets. “I said, ‘Look, it looks like there’s people in the government who want to prosecute me for bombast with a friend and private text message or something like that. This is all about things I think, and things I say.’ And he said, ‘Nobody’s going to lock you up or prosecute you for words.’ And I said, ‘We’ll see.’ That’s on tape. So it looks like I was right.” ‘Hell on Earth’ The next chapter in Caldwell’s Jan. 6 saga took place in the Central Virginia Regional Jail in Orange, Va. His experience there was similar to reports from other Jan. 6 detainees in facilities including the DC jail who said they were subjected to brutal beatings, denial of food, and banishment to solitary confinement, a practice condemned by Amnesty International as “cruel and all too usual.” Caldwell said he became convinced he would not live to see the outside world again. He said he spent 49 of his 53 days in solitary confinement. He was denied his prescription medications, which led to him having seizures on the concrete floor of his cell and soiling himself. The guards seemed to enjoy it, he said.“I’d have seizures on the concrete floor of my dungeon, and the guards looking through the little bulletproof glass laughing, laughing at me as I’m messing myself,” he said. “And I’m thinking, ‘I’m never getting out of here.’ “This is hell on earth. It really is hell on earth, 24 hours a day, no visitors, no medicines, no exercise. And my entire world was reduced to a 7-by-12-foot concrete dungeon with a huge steel door on one end.” The inhumane treatment started upon arrival. Caldwell said he underwent some kind of full body scan. He was subjected to an anal probe before and after the scan. “I guess it’s just to show that they can dehumanize you,” he said. One day a guard struck him hard in the lower back where his surgery had been. With the double handcuffs attached to a belly chain, he had no way to break the fall. “So I did kind of a face plant, I turn my head sideways,” he recalled. “And then someone stepped between my ankles and kicked me in the groin. Repeatedly. …I can now win (at) Double Jeopardy. If the question is, ‘How many times can you be kicked in the groin before you pass out?’ So I know the answer that I hope no one else finds out. But I have the answer to that question.” What happened next sticks with Caldwell, seared permanently in his memory. “The guy that was the kicker said to me, he said, ‘Where’s your Sky Daddy? Where’s your Sky Daddy? Gonna come down here and help you?’ He was referring, of course to Jesus Christ. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget it.” Occasionally Caldwell was allowed to take a phone call from Sharon. The phone was stuck through a hole in the bars, so he had to kneel to use the receiver. They prayed together. “It was just like an angel speaking from heaven,” he said. “And she would remind me of the importance of presenting my prayers and petitions to God with thanksgiving. So it’s not just, ‘Here’s my Christmas wish list, God.’ It’s like, ‘Thank you for another day. Thank you for my lovely wife, thank you for the chance that maybe I’ll get out of here someday.’ “One time I couldn’t come up with anything,” Caldwell said. “When I first started, I said: ‘Thank you, God, that I haven’t been beaten yet today. But the day isn’t over, Lord.” One day Caldwell saw a guard with a cart full of newspapers and other reading materials. He spotted a thick book that he suspected was a Holy Bible, and asked if he could have it. The guard said, “No man, I can’t give you anything.” “I felt embarrassed. And yet I believe that God put the words in my mouth. And I said, ‘Hey, it’s just a Bible, man.’ I was embarrassed because it’s the word of God. But it was the thing he needed to hear. He moved the newspapers and by golly, it was a tattered Bible.” Caldwell snatched the Bible when the guard placed it between the bars. He never felt so alone. He felt hated, despised. “Nobody knows what’s going on and nobody’s doing anything,” he thought. Then God spoke to him as the Bible opened to the Book of Psalms. “I sat down on the cold floor and I just opened the Bible,” he said. “I just held it in my hands and it flopped open to Psalm 109: ‘The mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful man is opened against me. They have spoken against me with deceitful tongues.’” “I said, ‘God knows what I’m going through! He knows. I’m not alone.’ And I thought, I told him many times, I said, ‘I just want to come home if this is all that’s here for me. I give up. I want to come home. I’ll come home to you right now. Let’s do it.’ And then I said, ‘But you know what, I’d love to see Sharon just one more time.’” Just a bit later in Psalm 109, it reads: “Help me, O Lord my God; save me according to Thy mercy. And let them know that this is Thy hand: and that Thou, O Lord, hast done it. They will curse and Thou will bless: let them that rise up against me be confounded: but Thy servant shall rejoice.” A few days later, Caldwell had a hearing before U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta. Attorney David Fischer argued convincingly that Caldwell needed to be released from incarceration. “Judge Mehta, I believe he saved my life,” Caldwell said. “Because I was broken physically. I had no self respect, no nothing. I was drained. The only thing I had was just just a shred of faith that Jesus was there with me. “You know what, I saw it. I saw the light,” he said. “Just a couple of days later, I fell into my wife’s arms in the dark in that parking lot, on March the 12th of last year.” Thomas and Sharon Caldwell on their farm, now empty after they sold their animals and equipment to pay legal bills, in Berryville, Va., on March 19, 2022. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) Hand of Providence Caldwell said he saw the hand of divine providence many times during his ordeal. He believes Fischer was sent to him by God, to rescue him from prison and defend him from the criminal charges. “He drove down and talked to me through bulletproof glass for about a half-hour,” Caldwell said. “He finally said to me, ‘Mr. Caldwell, look, I defend a lot of people in the federal system. I have some people lie to me for a living. You’re innocent.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell everybody.'” It took Caldwell weeks at home to stop shivering from the cold cell. One of his ankles was raw and swollen from the steel ankle restraints. He began to heal. First the physical wounds. The psychological damage is likely permanent. “It’s like, I am a human being. I am not a thing that you could put in a box and shove me away and lock me up. You know, I have worth and I’m a person,” he said. “And this is not right. And yet it happened, and is happening. “And I am just so fortunate, so fortunate that God brought me out, I don’t know why. I’m forever grateful. I feel like I was born again.” Caldwell said he worries about the other Jan. 6 defendants still in jail, held without bail for more than a year. He knows what they face, day after day. “They’re going to be emotionally scarred by post-traumatic stress disorder,” he said. “I would tell you I had PTSD before they threw me in there. Now I tell people I’ve just got stress disorder, because there ain’t no post. This is part of it. The pressure is on every single day.” ‘Evil All Around Me’ Caldwell said he was not part of any Oath Keepers plan to do anything at the Capitol on Jan. 6. He and Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III met very briefly at a local Virginia political rally the weekend after the 2020 presidential election, Caldwell said. Caldwell had just stepped off a hay wagon after making some remarks. “I’m approached by this guy with an eyepatch, and this was Stewart Rhodes,” he said. “He introduced himself …’You’re a nice guy, love what you said.’ And that is how I met Stewart Rhodes. “I’ve told you before, I know but it really needs emphasis, because the government has consistently fibbed about this,” Caldwell said. “I am not a member of the Oath Keepers. He did not attempt to recruit me. Nobody rushed me like Tau Kappa Epsilon at the University of Louisville, none of that.” As he works with his wife and attorney on his defense, Caldwell has had time to reflect on the past 14 months. Even with the passage of time, he said, his experience is still unbelievable. He calls it his “American Horror Story.” It is not something he ever imagined taking place in America. “I love our country. I can’t see how this is happening here. This is, this is Nazi Germany in the 30s. This is Josef Stalin,” Caldwell said. “This is Venezuela. This is Cuba. You know, in a way, it’s a little bit like the way Ferdinand Marcos operated in the Philippines. This is Pol Pot. It’s absolute evil. There was evil all around me.” As he works to regain his health and his good name, Caldwell turns his attention to holding onto the family legacy. I hope we don’t end up losing our farm. It’s the last thing that we have of monetary value,” he said. “Sharon and I are not rich people who moved to the country and got a farm and a McMansion. This is property that I worked as a child beside my parents who are in heaven, and my widowed sister.” Thomas Caldwell inside an empty barn that used to hold farming equipment, after selling the animals and equipment to pay legal bills, in Berryville, Va., on March 19, 2022. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) With stakes this high, Caldwell admits there have been times he was ready to throw in the towel, take a plea and save the family farm. “This is where our family memories live. This is where our heart lives. And they really don’t have the right to take this from us,” he said. “But as Sharon tells me, she says, ‘You’re not pleading anything.’ And I said, ‘Yes I am.’ “She says, ‘You’re not taking a plea deal. I don’t care if we’re living in the back of a car. We’re gonna fight all the way.’ “And what more could you ask for than a beautiful, soulful Christian woman who feels that way?”   Tyler Durden Wed, 03/23/2022 - 21:00.....»»

Sunday Collum: 2021 Year In Review, Part 3 - From 'Insurrection' To Authoritarianism Authored by David B. Collum, Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology - Cornell University (Email: dbc6@cornell.edu, Twitter: @DavidBCollum), I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. ~  Carl Sagan, 1995, apparently having invented a time machine Every year, David Collum writes a detailed “Year in Review” synopsis full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year’s is no exception. Read Part 1 - Crisis Of Authority & The Age Of Narratives here... Read Part 2 - Heart Of Darkness & The Rise Of Centralized Healthcare here... So, here we are at the third and final part of the 2021 Year in Review and it’s no longer 2021. Sorry about that pfuck-up. Think of it as not in 2021 but from 2021. You may have noticed that the first 200 pages (parts 1 and 2) were laced with a recurring catchphrase, “WTF is happening?” It was a literary device for noting that the events ceased to make sense within a conventional worldview, suggesting it is time to torch the old model and start anew. Our response to a disease that was killing a very small slice of the population was to sequester and vaccinate the entire population with an experimental drug of real but unquantified fatality rate. The apparent scientific illiteracy was not some mass psychosis. Y’all just got suckered by America’s Most Trusted Psychopathic Mass Murderer assisted by an epic media blitz sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry that had a distinct authoritarian quality. Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. ~ Albert Einstein During the brief period after uploading part 2 while grinding on this last portion, the Supreme Court took on the vaccine mandate issue, ruling that the only people forfeiting control of their own healthcare are the healthcare workersref 2 The court also illustrated their profound ignorance of the pandemic and what they were even charged to assess—the Constitutionality of mandates, not the efficacy.ref 3 The CEO of a major insurer reported a 40% spike in fatalities within the 18–65 age bracket that was not from Covid.ref 4 He said 10% would be a 3-sigma, once-every-200-year event: 40% is unheard of. Although he refrained from identifying a cause—deaths of despair, neglected healthcare, or a toxic vaccine—he knows precisely what did them in. They have been studying this stuff for centuries. I suspect his real message was that the insurance industry is about to contribute to inflation with rising premiums. Meanwhile, the pathological liars running the covid grift decided after two years the masks you’ve been wearing served no medical purpose and that the vaccines don’t work either. Wait: who said the masks and vaccines don’t work? We have known for many months that COVID-19 is airborne and therefore, a simple cloth mask is not going to cut it…Cloth masks are little more than facial decorations. ~ Leana Wen, MD, CNN medical expert with no admitted ties to the CCPref 5 Two doses of the vaccine offers very limited protection, if any. Three doses with a booster offer reasonable protection against hospitalization and deaths. Less protection against infection. ~ Albert Bourla, Pfizer CEOref 6 Here is my most heartfelt response to them: You psychopathic lying sacks of shit. You had us wear rags across our faces and put rags across the kids’ faces when clinical studies that could be read by people with half your IQs showed they were worthless. Suicide rates and other deaths of despair soared while you petty tyrants played your little games and generated billions of dollars of profits while destroying the middle class. You have maimed or killed an unknown number of gullible victims with your lockdowns, vaccines, remdesivir, and oppression of Ivermectin. You jammed a vaccine that bypassed animal trials into the fetuses of pregnant women, assuring them it was safe. If we spoke up, we got muzzled. If we refused the vaccine, we got fired. You should all hang from your necks until dead. I will piss on your graves. I feel better already. Very refreshing. Meanwhile, many of my friends and colleagues look at the same data and say, “Oh. I guess I better get the booster and a KN95 mask.” You have got to unfuck yourselves. You’ve been duped. It will get worse. The tactics used to oppress us would have made Stalin smirk. Australia was a beta test for what is to come in the rest of the west if we don’t wake up soon. They are gonna keep coming for one simple reason: we accepted it. We got bent over and squealed like pigs. What normalization does is transform the morally extraordinary into the ordinary. It makes us able to tolerate what was once intolerable by making it seem as if this is the way things have always been. ~ Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works A person is considered ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’ by the community simply because he accepts most of its social standards and behavioral patterns; which means, in fact, that he is susceptible to suggestion and has been persuaded to go with the majority on most ordinary or extraordinary occasions. ~ William Sargant, in Battle of the Mind Meanwhile, the financial world became even more dominated by central bankers who haven’t the slightest understanding of free-market capitalism. These twits or criminals—maybe both—have blown the most colossal bubble in history if you account for both price and breadth across the spectrum of asset classes. For the layperson, that means they have set us up for a colossal failure. Go back and re-read Valuations if you cannot picture the epic financial carnage lying dead ahead. The gap between the Fed funds rate and headline inflation has never been this large. These pinheads believe that if the markets do not coincide with their world views, the markets must be wrong. I am not an economist, but it appears that none of them are either. The notion that a dozen nitwits should set the most important price of them all—the price of capital—rather than letting the markets set it through price discovery is financial authoritarianism or what some call State Capitalism. I am angry in case it doesn’t show. Meanwhile, in 2020–21 the Fed contributed to destroying upwards of a half-million mom ’n’ pop businesses—they gutted the middle class—while giving BlackRock credit at 0.15% interest rates to buy up all their houses. Here is my advice to those day trading criminals: look both ways as you enter crosswalks. What I believe the response of society to a severe downturn given the current political climate will be epic. Big downturns come after euphorias. We have never entered a downturn with society at large this grumpy. We are in the early stages of The Fourth Turning.ref 7 The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded. ~ Charles-Louis De Secondat When a State has mortgaged all of its future revenues the State, by necessity, lapses into tranquility, langor, and impotence. ~ David Hume, 1752 So, WTF is going on here? In this final part, I address geopolitics. It begins with a relatively benign analysis of Biden’s first year in office, culminating with what I think Afghanistan is really about. The second section addresses my view of what may prove to be the most important day in US History—January 6, 2021. Although it is my best shot—Dave’s Narrative—I will not attempt to nor will I inadvertently spread the love to both sides of the political spectrum. It is a right-wing view that most right-wing politicians and pundits are too cowardly to state in polite company. The final section addresses the Rise of Global Authoritarianism. For a topic covered by thousands of treatises to call my knowledge skeletal is a reach. I have merely created an intellectual foundation—a chalk outline—to ponder why authoritarianism is here and what could stop it. (Plot spoiler: I do not believe it can be stopped.) They know where we are, they know our names, they know from our iPhones if we’re on our way to the grocery store or not. But they haven’t acted on that to put people in camps yet. They could do it. We could be East Germany in weeks, in a month. Huge concentration camps and so forth. ~ Daniel Ellsberg (@DanielEllsberg), author of The Pentagon Papers and Secrets Before moving on, let me give a plug for a book.ref 8 I have not even finished it yet, but it will change your worldview. Look at those ratings! I can guarantee none of those readers enjoyed it. Kennedy will curdle your bone marrow describing 35 years of atrocities commited by America’s Most Trusted Madman. It is emblematic of a much larger problem. Evil is powerless if good men are unafraid – Americans don’t realize what they have to lose. ~ Ronald Reagan The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. ~ H. L. Mencken Biden – Freshman Year Scorecard Let’s go, Brandon! ~ Cheers across America Most presidents begin their reign with a calling. Reagan raised our national self-esteem after a period of economic and political malaise. Bush Sr. took on the Gulf War, for better or worse. Clinton oversaw the economic boom and bank deregulation, again for better or worse. Bush Jr. was handed 9/11 and, in my opinion, boned it badly. Obama had to wrestle with the Great Financial Crisis. Trump was charged with disturbing the peace—drain the swamp if you will. Biden undeniably needed to begin healing the social discord that, regardless of its source, left the country wounded and divided. Maybe that was not Biden’s calling, but I wanted to see him become the president of all the people. This is not revisionist history of my failing memory: Biden’s the last of the Old Guard, which is probably why he was slipped into the office by the DNC old guard. I am guessing there will be no Supreme Court stacking; that was just rhetoric (I hope). There will be wars just like every president (except Trump, who brought troops home.) Congress is more balanced again and, at the time of this writing, the Senate is still in Republican hands. Hopefully, the gridlock will usher in some garden-variety dysfunction. I have subtle concerns about a Harris presidency. Admittedly, my opinion is based on precious few facts, but Harris displays a concerning shallowness of character, a lack of a moral compass, and the potential to slide to the left of Bernie. (I sometimes reflect on what it must have been like raising the teenaged Kamala.) I am trying to reserve judgment because first impressions scavenged from the digital world are sketchy if not worthless. ~ 2020 Year in Review By this description, Biden tanked his GPA. He ushered in a Crusade to erase the Trump era and its supporters. The weaponizing of social media and censorship against one’s opponents was probably unavoidable, but the downside will be revealed when the wind changes. Team Biden took banishing of political opponents on social media to new levels by, as noted by Jen Psaki, flagging “problematic posts” and the “spread of disinformation” for censorship. NY Timeslapdog Kevin Roose called for a “reality Czar,” not noticing the Russian metaphor problem. The War on Domestic Terror may prove to be a turning point in American history, one that risks extinguishing the flame of the Great American Experiment. Significant erosions of Constitutionally granted civil liberties discussed throughout the rest of this document may not have been Biden’s fault, but they occurred on his watch. If you see an injustice and remain silent, you own it. I can’t remain silent. Biden is the epitome of the empty, amoral creature produced by our system of legalized bribery. His long political career in Congress was defined by representing the interests of big business, especially the credit card companies based in Delaware. He was nicknamed Senator Credit Card. He has always glibly told the public what it wants to hear and then sold them out. ~ Chris Hedges, right-wing hatchet man Team Biden. Books have been written about Trump’s fumbles in the first months (or four years) of his presidency. See Josh Rogin’s Chaos Under Heaven in Books or Michael Lewis’ less balanced The Fifth Risk reviewed in last year’s YIR. The Cracker Jack team assembled for Joe reveals a glob of feisty alt-left activists and omnipresent neocons. According to Rickards, two dozen players on Biden’s roster were recruited from the consulting firm WestExec Advisors (including Psaki and Blinken.)ref 1 That’s power and groupthink. David Axelrod: You must ask yourself, ‘Why are we allowing him to roll around in the hallways doing impromptu interviews?’ Jen Psaki: That is not something we recommend. In fact, a lot of times we say ‘don’t take questions.’ Young black entrepreneurs are just as capable of succeeding given the chance as white entrepreneurs are, but they don’t have lawyers; they don’t have accountants. ~ Joe Biden Joe Biden, President – Joe is the Big Guy. In an odd sense, he is immunized from criticism because he is visibly losing his marbles. His cognitive decline is on full display; this 52 seconds of gibberish about inflation is emblematic.ref 2 He’s 80 years old, for Cripes sake. I read a book this year entitled, When the Air Hits Your Brain, which derives from a neurosurgical aphorism that finishes with “you ain’t never the same.” Wanna guess who had two brain aneurysms (one rupturing) years ago leading to a miraculous recovery?ref 3 You’re the most famous African-American baseball player. ~ Joe Biden to the Pope, context unknown (possibly even a deep fake)ref 4 I am neither reveling in Joe’s problems nor do I believe he is calling the shots. Claims that the puppet master is Harris are, no offense, on the low side of clueless. Obama seems like a better guess but Barrack was a front man too. Having an impaired leader of a superpower, however, is disquieting and potentially destabilizing, especially with Taiwan in play. Biden’s energy policy that clamped down on fossil fuel production only to ask OPEC to open the spigots is one for the ages. The covid policies bridging both administrations were catastrophic, but throwing workers out of jobs into the teeth of unprecedented labor shortages makes zero sense. The nouveau inflation—Bidenflation—may stick to him like it stuck to Jimmy Carter, but that is unfair to both presidents. Look to the Fed in both cases for blame. Troubles at the southern border and the Afghanistan pullout are a couple of serious logs for a raging inferno that represents Biden’s first year in office. As discussed in a later section, demonizing “white supremacists”—not just political opponents but opponents labeled by their race—will not be viewed well by historians unless history is at a serious fork and Joe is ultimately protrayed as the founder of some new Fatherland. Kamala Harris, Vice President – Whenever situations heat up, Harris is off like a prom dress. During the crisis at the border that she was charged with overseeing, she took off to Europe, cackling about never even visiting the border. Kamala endorsed and claimed credit for the Kabul evacuation.ref 5,6 Realizing she had pulled yet another boner she pulled out before they renamed it Kamalabad. (Hey: At least I had the decency to pass on the Kamalatoe joke.) In a moment of surreal comedy, Harris hosted a public chat with Bill Clinton on “empowering women.”ref 7 She can even serve up semi-reasonable ideas with dollops of cringe. If the Democrats nominate her in 2024, may God have mercy on their souls—she is unelectable—or maybe on our souls—I could be wrong. Jen Psaki, Press Secretary – The role of any press secretary is to calm the press down with nuggets of insight—to feed the birds. When that fails, lie your ass off, all with a cold, calculating sociopathy. I would say she did the best job imaginable given the hand she was dealt. Disagree? I’ll just have to circle back with you on that. Ron Klain, Whitehouse Chief of Staff – This guy might be the rainmaker, but I haven’t quite figured him out. He has the durability of Andrei Gromyko, maintaining a central role through three democratic administrations. Keep an eye on him. Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury – We have yet to find out Yellen’s role because she has not been pressed into service by a crisis. To resolve the minor “meme stock” bruhaha, which did not call for a resolution, she needed an ethics waiver owing to the soft corruption of her bank-sponsored million-dollar speaking tour. My expectations of her are quite low, and I imagine she will meet them. Antony Blinken, Secretary of State – He has a good resume. Like Psaki, he is forced to play a weak hand. He lacks Psaki’s skills. Jennifer Mulhern Granholm, US Energy Secretary – In a press conference she was asked how many barrels of oil a day the US consumes and said, “I do not have those numbers in front of me.” ‘Nuff said. Get her out of there. Merrick Garland, Attorney General – The press will tear anybody a new one so snippets with bad optics are always dangerous. I would say, however, ordering the FBI to investigate parents who get irate at school boards—even those who seem rather threatening—is over the top. Leave that to the local and state police. His role in the January 6th event and push into domestic terrorism is potentially sinister and moves him onto my shitlist. Saule Omarova, nominee for Comptroller of the Currency – This one blows my circuits. She is what in the vernacular is called “a commie” straight from Kazakhstan with a thesis on Marxism—a devout believer that the State should run the show. She also hails from Cornell Law School. (Yeah. I know. STFU.) Matthew Continetti of the National Review noted she is, “an activist intellectual who is—and I say this in the kindest way possible—a nut.”ref 8 There will be no more private bank deposit accounts and all of the deposit accounts will be held directly at the Fed. ~ Saule Omarova, Cornell Law Professor   We want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change. ~ Saule Omarova, on oil and gas companies For those who have seen the horror movie The Ring, Cornell tried to exorcise the demon by sending “the VHS tape” to Washington, D.C., but it came back stamped “Return to Sender.” She withdrew. Hey Team Biden: you could want to snatch up MIT’s Venezuelan-derived president who is already on the board of the World Economic Forum and was instrumental in pushing Aaron Swartz to off himself.ref 9 John Kerry, Climate Czar – Don’t we have enough Czars? John is charged with flying around the world in his private jet, setting the stage for a 30-year $150 trillion push to make many bank accounts much My disdain for the climate movement catches Kerry in the splash zone. Pete Buttegieg, Transportation Secretary – I must confess to liking Mayor Pete and would have been happier if he had gotten the crash course in the oval office rather than Joe. The one criticism I would make is that taking two months of paternity leave during the nation’s greatest transportation crisis seemed odd. I think when you are in such an important position you find a way. Get a nanny. Bring the twins to your office. Leave them with your spouse. For Pete’s sake (sorry), stay at your post. For the record, after my youngest son was born my wife had health problems. I used to bring him to work and lecture with him in a Snugly and changed a shitload of diapers. You could have done it too, Pete. Samantha Power, Head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) – Sam is a garden-variety neocon, having served as ambassador to the UN and on the National Security Council, both under Obama. She was central to the planning behind destabilizing Libya,ref 10 which sure looks like a bad idea unless destabilizing the Middle East is our foreign policy. Please just don’t fuck up too much. Cass Sunstein, Homeland Security employee. This is not really an appointment, per se. Cass is the Harvard-employed husband of neocon Samantha Powers. In his 2008 book, Conspiracy Theories, Cass declared “the existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories” to be our greatest threat, outlining five possible solutions, and I quote, “(1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might engage in counter-speech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counter-speech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help.” Guys like Cass who come out of Harvard’s CIA training camps are menaces to society. Marvelous hire, Joe. Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary for Political Affairs – She is famous for her hot mic “Fuck the EU” comment and for engineering the coup in Ukraine—a Wonder Bread neocon. William J. Burns, Head of the CIA – I’ve got nothing on Bill, not even a fingerprint. It would be difficult for me to grade him poorly on a curve with the likes of John Brennan, William Casey, and Alan Dulles. (I once had dinner with a former CIA head John Deutch. What a dick.) Christopher Wray, Head of the FBI – As the FBI increasingly looks like the Praetorian Guard for the power elite (both in and out of public office), Wray has followed in the footsteps of his predecessors like J. Edgar Hoover and James Comie to be both top cop and dubious scoundrel. Wray’s fate might be dictated by the ongoing Durham investigation, but I have not seen any heads roll inside the Beltway since Watergate a half-century ago. Tony Fauci, Director of NIAID – That bipartisan, power-hungry authoritarian—The Most Trusted Madman in America—is a recurring theme. He doesn’t know any science. He is a political hack—a chameleon—who survived 35 years multiple administrations by being able slither out of anybody’s claws and regrow his tail. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the CDC – She got serious attention in part 2. I am horrified by her sociopathy. I think she is evil. Amy Gutmann, Ambassador to Germany – Guttman was given the job after giving the Big Guy more than $900,000 in speaking fees and an honorary degree from UPenn when she was the University’s president. I am sure every ambassador pays market rates for the job.  Cathy Russell, Biden’s Director of Presidential Personnel–She is married to Tom Donlin, Chairman of the gargantuan multinational investment firm, BlackRock. Their daughter made it into the Whitehouse National Security Council. A talented family enjoying the political respect accorded to billionaires. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, Head of the Office of Science – Despite scientific chops as a climate-change-supporting agronomist, she has no administrative experience and is inexperienced in the scientific programs that she is overseeing. Of course, everything is now about the $150 trillion climate grift, so she’s our girl. Jared Bernstein, Whitehouse Economic Advisor – He is highly educated, with a bachelor’s degree in music, master’s degrees in social work and philosophy, and a Ph.D. in social welfare. His greatest strength may be his complete lack of training in economics. Shalanda Baker, Deputy Director for Energy Justice in the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity at the Department of Energy – Is that a salaried position? ‘Nuff said. General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Mark transitioned from the Trump administration. It caused a stir when he went more “woke” than Chelsea Manning. We will no longer defeat our enemy but assign them pronouns and include them. This was followed by a scandal outlined in Bob Woodward’s book in which he instructed military leaders in a secret meeting to bypass Trump on important military decisions.ref 11 He then unilaterally told his peer in the Chinese military that he would drop a dime if there was an impending military conflict. He tried to hang it on the Secretary of Defense, but the Secretary spit the bit fast.ref 12 My theory is that the sudden wokeness was to commandeer allies on the far left knowing that scandal was coming. It worked. He looks like he is right out of Dr. Strangelove without the lip gloss and eye shadow. Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Health and Human Services. He refuses to acknowledge the merits of natural Covid-19 immunity. That puts him near the top of my shitlist. Becerra has no medical or scientific training. He’s a lawyer, but at least he is from an underrepresented group. Rachel Levine, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services – I know little about her. She might be the most qualified candidate, certainly more so than her boss Becerra. Call me skeptical of a purely merit-based appointment. Hunter Biden. I was going to place Hunter in the bullets and call him Head of the DEA and National Association of the Arts, but I had reservations. There are sad, heartwarming, and troubling roles played by Hunter Biden. His addiction is a highly personal problem that is difficult for the first family to deal with, especially given other tragedies in their lives. Joe Rogan succinctly explained Hunter’s remarkably odd behavior: “he is a crackhead.” They are part and parcel of being dopesick. Leaked emails from the laptop show Dad to be a compassionate and loving father struggling to save his son. Ironically, old footage surfaced of Joe ranting about how we have to deal with crackheads severely no matter whom they know.ref 13 It did not age well. It is clear that Hunter Biden was selling access and influence. It appears that Joe Biden was aware of that effort. That is very serious. If these emails are false, this is a major story. If they are true, this is a major scandal. ~ Jonathan Turley Before you start blubbering, however, recall that Hunter’s laptop revealed that he was playing critical roles in Russian and Chinese dealings for the Biden family. The Kleenex gets tossed and the gloves now come off. Hunter’s business partner stepped forward admitting nefarious deals were made with Joe involved. Joe denied knowing the clown, but a then photo of the two surfaced.ref 14 This year Hunter also began selling his artwork for up to $500,000 a pop behind a “Chinese Wall”—a veil that ensures we cannot find out who bought the art.ref 15,16,17 The money might literally be from behind a Chinese wall. That buys a lot of crack even after the Big Guy’s 10% cut. Figure 1 shows two paintings, one by a Hunter and the other by two elephants. (No joke, elephants have been painting brilliant pictures free-trunk for decades.) Figure 1. Biden art (left) brought $500,000. The elephant painting (shown being painted) brought $39,000. We are a democracy…there are things you can’t do by executive order unless you are a dictator. ~ Joe Biden, several years ago Executive Orders. Before the first week of his presidency was over, Biden had signed 37 of those beauties. Some, such as the order extending rent moratoria, were overtly unconstitutional. Some merely unwound Trump’s orders that had unwound Obama’s orders. This is dodge ball. While Yale was battling a civil rights case for discriminatory admissions practices, the Biden DOJ dismissed it without comment.ref 18 Yale is said to have promptly destroyed the evidence, which shows they have good lawyers. Transgender athletes were reinstated in women’s sports, ensuring that longstanding records will be shattered.ref 19 It got surreal when UPenn’s transgender swimmer was beaten by Yale’s transgender swimmer.ref 19a An executive order giving the IRS direct access to our bank accounts seems both sinister and inevitable…death and taxes as they say.ref 20 There are a lot of Republicans out there giving speeches about how outraged they are about the situation at the border. Not many who are putting forward solutions. ~ Jen Psaki, forgetting about the wall idea Crisis at the Border. The mainstream press covered this one exhaustively. There are parallels here with the North Africans crossing into Europe several years back. It looks intentional, but why? Don’t tell me about building a democratic base. That is too far in the future and too simplistic. It is far easier to control the elections at the server level. Baffling details include the administration’s suggestion that border agents should be empowered to authorize the immigration of “climate migrants.”ref 21 That could boost a few agents salaries. Rumors of US military planes transporting illegals into the US suggests somebody could punk the elite: load up a boat and drop a couple hundred on Martha’s Vineyard. On further thought, rather than offering Vineyardians more gardeners, drop off some Afghans.ref 22Whoever is calling the shots, this is neither about civil rights nor climate change. Attorney General Merrick Garland clarified the immigration challenge: Today marks a step forward in our effort to make the asylum process fairer and more expeditious. This rule will both reduce the caseload in our immigration courts and protect the rights of those fleeing persecution and violence. If you do that, that will set off a mass migration that’s like nothing that we have ever seen in this country because the entire world will then come on through to get their asylum, essentially legalizing illegal immigration, in a very clever way. ~ Attorney General Merrick Garland WTF did Garland just say? Both his meaning and intent are unclear. The immigrants, of course, were all unvaccinated, which would have been OK by me had the administration not gone Third Reich to vaccinate US citizens. The administration also wanted to offer $450,000 to every immigrant family separated from their loved ones: why?ref 23They seemed to walk that third-trimester idea back and then walked it forward again. A half-billion-dollar, no-bid contract to manage the immigrants went to friends of the administration.ref 24 Your tax dollars at work. At least we are back to business as usual. By the way, where is Border Czar Kamala Harris while all this is going on? Making creepy videos.ref 25,26 People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations. ~ Graham Greene Miscellaneous issues surfaced that either went away or are still festering quietly. On the positive side, stacking the Supreme Court—increasing the number of justices to get a left-leaning majority—seems to have been only a political football. Granting Washington DC statehood, while to a plebe like me doesn’t seem nuts, has the trappings of a massive powershift to the left in national elections. Joe invaded the legal process by declaring Chauvin guilty and Kyle Rittenhouse a white supremacist. Would Obama have done this? I don’t think so. Rittenhouse may get his “10% for the Young Guy” in defamation suits against Joe and every media outlet on the planet. Joe checking his watch five times at the funeral of dead marines didn’t play well,ref 27 but if you put a camera on me I wouldn’t make it to lunchtime without serving up Jim Acosta fresh meat. The main drama of Biden’s first year, however, played out in a distant land.   Afghanistan—where empires go to die. ~ Mike Malloy Afghanistan. I’ve been groping for nomenclature — Afghazi, Afghazistan, Benghanistan, Benghazistan, Saigonistan, Clusterfuckistan, and Bidenistan—to describe this odd moment in history. That 20-year skirmish cost an estimated $2.3 trillion.ref 28 The idea that it was only a few thousand troops with no fatalities in the last year or two makes me question my wisdom, but I can’t start revising history. Whether for right or wrong, I was glad we were getting out. The ensuing Crisis in Kabul looked like the graveyard of a presidency—a combination of the Bay of Pigs and the Iran Hostage Crisis that would dog us for years. They are chanting “Death to America”, but they seemed friendly at the same time. ~ CNN reporter wearing a burka looking for a husband Even before the evacuation started we were hearing about huge caches of weapons that would be abandoned.ref 29 In an eat-and-dash that would make an IHOP waiter wince, we bugged out at 2:00 AM without telling anybody.ref 30Jalalabad Joe had assured us repeatedly the 300,000-strong Afghan army would hang tough. They were defeated in time to chow down on some goat stew for dinner. Images of desperate Afghan’s clinging to transport planes brought up images of the Saigon Embassy rooftop. We left service dogs in cages.ref 31 Marines would never do that. Stranded Americans and Afghan collaborators were begging for help to get to the airport and even to get into the airport.ref 32The administration used a drone to strike on some kids and their dads loading water into a truck to change the news cycle briefly.ref 33 The Afghan who is credited with saving Joe Biden and John Kerry in a disastrous excursion to Afghanistan years earlier got left behind pleading for help:ref 34 Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family. Don’t forget me here. Mercenaries like Blackwater’s Erik Prince tried to prevent Americans from taking The Final Exit,ref 35 only to get stonewalled by the Whitehouse. Meanwhile, the top commander and four-star Wokie, Mark Milley, was too mired in scandal.ref 36 Retired generals were calling for the active-duty generals to resign.ref 37 The withdrawal could not be botched worse if you tried. The populace are now facing a winter of profound famine.ref 38 Rural Afghanistan has been rocked by climate change. The past three decades have brought floods and drought that have destroyed crops and left people hungry. And the Taliban — likely without knowing climate change was the cause — has taken advantage of that pain. ~ CBS News, sticking it like a Russian gymnast This vexing story was from the Theater of the Absurd. Starting with the caches of military equipment left behind, I have two simple solutions that a group of teenagers could have concocted: Announce Blow Shit Up Friday (BSUF). Provide the military personnel with some grenade launchers and a few kegs of beer, grill up some goat burgers, and start blowing shit up. That would be a blast. If that is too unprofessional, you gather all armaments and anything of else of value into an open space. Once the wheels go up on the last troop transport, drop a MOAB—Mother of All Bombs.ref 39 Tough luck for those who were trying to hotwire the stuff when the MOAB arrives. It will take a year to get them out…If you use those billions of dollars of weapons behind I promise they’ll be using them against your grandchildren and mine someday. ~ Joe Biden, Presidential Candidate, 2007ref 40 The collapse of the Afghan Army also couldn’t have come as a surprise. The military and CIA certainly knew that those troops wouldn’t withstand a West Side Story-level brawl.ref 41 The soldiers were paid by the US for their service COD, and there was no C left. Shockingly, most of the payroll booty had long-since been snarfed up by the politicians and top military brass from the only swamp in Afghanistan.ref 42 Whocouldanode? Taliban can murder as many people as they want. But if they keep trolling Biden like this they’re gonna get kicked off of social media. ~ Jesse Kelley, noting the Taliban has an active Twitter feed Here is a script playing out in my noggin. The Crisis in Kabul was an arms deal—Fast and Furious 2.0. One of our top diplomats called the Taliban and said, “We are pulling out in a month. We’ll leave the keys in the ignition and pallets of $100 billsref 43 to help pay for upkeep. If you guys let us sneak out unmolested, you can party like it’s 999—an authentic Taliban-themed fraternity party. We will leave you guns, money, nice facilities, and even a few wives. If you fuck this up, however, we will be right back here.” The Whitehouse also lent a legitimizing tone to the regime when speaking about “working with the Taliban” as part of the deal. In return, the State Department called on the Taliban to form an “inclusive and representative government,”ref 44 so there’s that bit of risible nonsense. Neville Chamberlain couldn’t have done any better. The bottom line: 90% of Americans who wanted to leave Afghanistan were able to leave Afghanistan. ~ Jalalabad Joe Biden That might be a great poll number or inflated final exam grade at a college Joe erroneously claimed to attend, but I am not sure “90%” is impressive in this context. The actual evacuation was ineptly executed from the get-go. Mr. Rogers, with the help of his viewing audience of toddlers, could have Kabuled together a better plan based on the simple precept, “pull out the civilians then the military.” Baffling claims the Whitehouse was obstructing evacuations of charter flights containing Americans was not right-wing propaganda: Where are they going to land? A number of these planes have a handful of Americans, but they may have several hundred individuals who do not have proper documentation of identity….we don’t have manifests for them, we don’t know what the security protocols are for them, we don’t know what their documentation is…hard choices you face in government. ~ Jen Psaki, press conference WTF actually happened? When nothing makes sense your model is wrong. Glenn Greenwald got the scent that withdrawal was intentionally mishandled, suggesting this is “fully within the character of the deep-state operatives.”ref 45We also forgot to destroy our sophisticated FBI-derived software and a complete database containing the biometrics of Friends of the USA,ref 46,47,48 enabling the Taliban to find potential detractors for an attitude correction. Think of it as Afghanistan’s high-tech War on Domestic Terror. The stonewalling of help from other countries also makes no sense using a conventional model.ref 49 Biden’s CIA Director met with Taliban leadership covertly—so covertly we all knew about it—to concoct a “deal”, but what kind of deal?ref 50 During the evacuation, we gave the Taliban names of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies supposedly to let them pass through the militant-controlled perimeter of the city’s airport.ref 51 They would never abuse this list, right? A large number of Afghan refugees—possibly as many as 100,000 according to Tucker Carlson—entering the US are consistent with our open border policy along the Mexican border, but what is that all about? Afghans, by the way, are reputed to be always recalcitrant to assimilate in Europe just in case you’re thinking of renting out your basement as an Airbnb.ref 52 What happened in Afghanistan is not incompetence. We are not that incompetent. ~ General George Flynn The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war. ~ Julian Assange, 2011ref y I have no doubt that blood was shed after we left. More than a few US sympathizers surely lost their heads. As to the stranded Americans, why were they still there? China had evacuated their citizens months earlier.ref 53(Hmmm…Chinese citizens were there?) Two dozen students from the Cajon Valley Union School District and 16 parents there for an enriching summer trip were stranded.ref 54 How did they get visas? That field trip will generate a few college essays that will beat any written about dead grandparents, although Kabul State College may be their only option. This is now on-track, Peter, to be the largest airlift in U.S. history. I would not say that is anything but a success. ~ Jen Psaki to Peter Doucy The media can create, steer, or smother narratives at will. I have a question: Where are all the dead Americans—thousands of them—said to be left behind? Horror stories should be surfacing daily, but they’re not. We shit a mudbrick when One Dead Kashoggi (ODK) got fed to the camels in Saudi Arabia. Three thousand fatalities on 9/11 got us into Afghanistan in the first place. We supposedly left behind “thousands of Americans” but without generating a single headline? So much for that Bay of Pigs­–Iran Hostage Crisis analogy. So here are my next questions and I am deadly serious: Did we get duped? Was the whole thing more sham than farce? There is no such thing as a true account of anything. ~ Gore Vidal Here is Dave’s Narrative. We installed the Taliban as the rulers of Afghanistan as the best of many bad options. The winners are the Taliban and China. The two are inking deals for mineral rights as I type. The chaos was intentional. But why accept such a profound humiliation and dashed hopes of future alliances in global hotspots? I think that the Taliban winning the war in Afghanistan, and then the way our exit happened, has absolutely inspired jihadists all over the world. The Taliban is saying, we just didn’t defeat the United States, we defeated NATO. We defeated the world’s greatest military power, ever. I think, not only will the jihadists be inspired, but a lot of them are going to come to Afghanistan to be part of the celebration, to be part of jihadist central. We are more at risk, without a doubt. ~ Michael Morell, former CIA Director under Obama Maybe China has way more than just Hunter’s laptop to blackmail us and is about to take possession of Taiwan soon. While we await the next Kyle Rittenhouse trial to preoccupy ourselves, take a peek at this video. Skip over the election stuff since we all have rock-hard opinions on that and go to minute 55:30. Xi Jinping’s right-hand man, Di Dongsheng, publicly explained the extent Beijing controls US politics:ref 55 There is nothing in the world that money can’t fix, right? If one wad of cash can’t handle it, then I’ll have two wads. (laughter) Of course this is how I do things. In fact, to be a bit blunt, in the past 30 years or past 40 years, we manipulated the core power circle in the United States, right? I mentioned earlier that Wall Street started to have a very strong influence on U.S. domestic and foreign affairs in the 1970s. So we figured out our path and those we could be dependent on. But the problem is that Wall Street’s status has declined after 2008. More importantly, starting in 2016 Wall Street has no influence on Trump. Why? It is awkward. Trump had a soft breach of contract on Wall Street once, so the two sides had conflicts. They tried to help during the Sino-US trade war. As far as I know, friends from the U.S. told me that they tried to help, but they were too weak. But now we see that Biden has come to power. (crowd laughs) The traditional elites, political elites, and the establishment have a very close relationship with Wall Street. You all see it: Trump talked about Biden’s son, “You have investment funds around the world.” Who helped him build the funds? You understand? There are transactions involved. (laughter) So at this point in time, we use an appropriate way to express a certain kind of goodwill. (applause) ~Di Dongsheng, Vice Director and Secretary of the Center for Foreign Strategic Studies of Chinaref 55 January 6th Capitol Insurrection Alec Baldwin killed more people in 2021 than did the January 6th insurrectionists. Anybody reading this far knows that the January 6th riots stemmed from the right-wing voters who doubted the veracity of the 2020 election. Twitter polls show that view is not as partisan or as rare as the media would lead you to believe. I happen to doubt U.S. election integrity but have for quite a few election cycles. ref 1 Hacked Stratfor emails show the democrats rigged the vote in ’08 ref 2 and Republicans rigged it in ’04.ref 3 It is bipartisan Capture the Flag with red and blue pinnies.ref 4 In any event, Trump’s Green Goblin strategy was to beckon the MAGA faithful to the Capitol to protest the Electoral College signing off on the results. It was not so different than the mobs outside the courthouses trying to subvert the Rittenhouse and Chauvin trials, but the scale of January 6th was much larger and the optics were Biblical. It got out of hand and, at times, even a little Helter Skelter. Mob psychology elicits dramatic changes in brain chemistry and has been the topic of many laboratory studies.”ref 5 Temporary insanity is not a crazy defense. My Tweet got some hysterically hateful responses from the Right who missed the sarcasm and the Left who did not. I think I squandered more of my valuable time left on this planet burrowing through the January 6th story than on the Covid-Vaccine combo platter. I should preface this section by noting that I was praised by a thoughtful long-time reader for being “balanced and measured and carefully worded, even on edgy topics.” I may be on the cusp of disappointing him. It’s impossible to peer at the The Great Insurrection through a non-partisan lens. Both sides may find common ground in the belief that January 6th is a profound fork in the road of the American Experiment. The sock-starching Left will celebrate it as a national holiday every year while the bed-wetting Right will try to ignore it. Both are wrong. Look at that photo and pause to ponder its implications. Put a funny caption to it. Let’s hear from some Republicans first: We must also know what happened every minute of that day in the White House — every phone call, every conversation, every meeting leading up to, during, and after the attack. ~ Liz Cheney I think Lizard nailed it. We’re on the same page. Let’s keep going… January 6 was worse than 9/11, because it’s continued to rip our country apart and get permission for people to pursue autocratic means, and so I think we’re in a much worse place than we’ve been. I think we’re in the most perilous point in time since 1861 in the advent of the Civil War. ~ Michael Dowd, former Bush strategist I would like to see January 6th burned into the American mind as firmly as 9/11 because it was that scale of a shock to the system. ~ George Will, syndicated columnist Mike and George are as unhinged as I am but on different hinges. I think they are delusional and offensive. Edging forward… The 1/6 attack for the future of the country was a profoundly more dangerous event than the 9/11 attacks. And in the end, the 1/6 attacks are likely to kill a lot more Americans than were killed in the 9/11 attacks, which will include the casualties of the wars that lasted 20 years following. ~ Steve Smith, Lincoln Project co-founder Now I’m getting the heebie-jeebies if for no other reason than the Lincoln Project is filled with Democratic operatives (or at least neocons) pretending to be Republicans—as authentic as the Indians at the Boston Tea Party or stepmoms on PornHub. We have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders but from violence that gathers within…There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home… But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. ~ George W. Bush, a thinly veiled allusion to January 6 George got some serious guff from more than a few of the 80 million Fox-watching extremists including the Grand Wizard: So interesting to watch former President Bush, who is responsible for getting us into the quicksand of the Middle East (and then not winning!), as he lectures us that terrorists on the ‘right’ are a bigger problem than those from foreign countries that hate America. ~ Donald Trump He nailed it. I have stated previously that Bush committed war crimes. Of course, the National Security Machine chimed in… The No. 1 national security threat I’ve ever seen in my life to this country’s democracy is the party that I’m in — the Republican Party. It is the No. 1 national security threat to the United States of America. ~ Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Dude! You just tarred about 80 million asses with that brushstroke. Let’s move further left to find some middle ground: They swooned for him on 9/11 because he gave them what they most crave: the view that Al Qaeda is comparable to those who protested at the Capitol on 1/6. ~ Glenn Greenwald, on George Bush’s comments Glenn is part of a growing cadre of liberals including Matt Taibbi, Tim Pool, Bill Maher, The Weinstein Brothers, and Joe Rogan who are unafraid to extend olive branches across The Great Partisan Divide at risk of being labled white supremacists and Nazis, but they are hardly emblematic of the Left. From the elite Left… I think we also had very real security concerns. We still don’t yet feel safe around other members of Congress.  ~ AOC AOC’s comment prompted one pundit to tell her to “get a therapist”, which seems correct given her moment of maximum drama was when a security guard was screaming outside her door, “Are you OK, Ma’am?” #AlexandriaOcasioSmollett began trending on social media when it was disclosed that she was not even in the building when Ragnar and his buddies showed up.ref 6 They will have to decide if Donald J. Trump incited the erection…the insurrection. ~ Chuck Schumerref 7 What ya thinking about Chuckie? We are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War. The Confederates back then never breached the Capitol as insurrectionists did on Jan. 6. ~ Joe Biden Joe may be on the A-Team, but he hasn’t found his way out of the locker room. The blue-check-marked liberals did not mince words… The 9/11 terrorists and Osama bin Laden never threatened the heart of the American experiment. The 1/6 terrorists and Donald Trump absolutely did exactly that. Trump continues that effort today. ~ S.V. Dáte, Huffington Post’s senior White House correspondent The only effective way for the government to respond to an act of war by domestic terrorists is to be prepared to meet them with machine guns and flamethrowers and mow them down. Not one of those terrorists who broke through police lines should have escaped alive. ~ a Washington Post commenter Moving as far left as you can by tuning into the most cunning commie who can outfox any Western leader… Do you know that 450 individuals were arrested after entering the Congress? They came there with political demands. ~ Vladimir Putin The Cast of this Drama. This Kafkaesque narrative will be scrutinized by historians and democratic operatives for years to come. The Left will cast this event as a truly unique moment in US history, but it was precedented. I see parallels with the 1920’s Bonus Army in which World War I veterans were pissed off about unpaid post-war benefits.ref 8 In the saddest of ironies, many were killed by Army regulars. Some authorities, including a young Dwight Eisenhower, thought it was a benign protest while others thought it was an assault on America. Grumpy crowds appear at the Capitol only on days of the week that end in “y.” Recently, f.....»»

Durham Probe Inches Closer To Hillary As Alfa Bank Hoax Plot Thickens Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations.com, A Hillary Clinton campaign operation to plant a false rumor about Donald Trump setting up a “secret hotline” to Moscow through a Russian bank was much broader than known and involved multiple U.S. agencies, according to declassified documents and sources briefed on an ongoing criminal investigation of the scheme. In addition to the FBI, the 2016 Clinton campaign tried to convince the Obama administration’s State Department, Justice Department and Central Intelligence Agency to look into the hoax, and continued pressing the issue even after Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.The goal was to trigger federal investigative activity targeting her Republican rival and leak the damaging information to the media. “The Clinton machine flooded the FBI with pressure from a number of angles until investigations of Trump were opened and reopened,” said one of the briefed sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive law enforcement matter. "The deception was wide-ranging." Michael Sussmann: The indicted former Clinton campaign attorney wasn't the only one feeding the bogus Alfa Bank story to the feds. perkinscoie.com Special Counsel John Durham outlined the FBI part of the scheme in a felony indictment of Michael Sussmann. The former Clinton campaign lawyer was charged last month with making a false statement to the former general counsel of the FBI when he claimed he was not working “for any client” in bringing to the FBI’s attention allegations of a secret channel of communication between computer servers in Trump Tower and the Alfa Bank in Russia. According to the indictment, Sussmann was in fact acting on behalf of clients including the Clinton campaign, and an unnamed tech executive who RCI has previously reported is Rodney L. Joffe, a regular adviser to the Biden White House on cybersecurity and infrastructure policies. Internal emails reveal the Clinton operatives knew the links they made between Trump and Russia were “weak,” even describing them as a “red herring,” but fed them to investigators anyway. The Sussmann indictment revealed the doubts of those developing the Alfa Bank story. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia After Sussmann’s meeting with the FBI in September 2016, the Clinton campaign approached the State Department the following month with the same lead, this time using paid Clinton campaign subcontractor Christopher Steele to feed the rumors. A former British intelligence officer, Steele was offered as a reliable source to help corroborate the rumors. On Oct. 11, 2016, Steele gave his contact at Foggy Bottom documents alleging that a supposed hidden server at Trump Tower was pinging Moscow. Christopher Steele: Author of the debunked dossier passed the Alfa Bank story to the State Department, which passed it along to FBI agent Peter Strzok. (Aaron Chown/PA FILE via AP) Two days later, a State official who previously worked under former secretary Clinton funneled the information to the FBI’s then-top Eurasia/Russia counterintelligence official, Stephen Laycock, according to recently declassified notes and testimony. Laycock, in turn, forwarded the information to Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who led the investigation of Trump and his campaign and had just weeks earlier texted a bureau lawyer, “We’ll stop [Trump from being elected].” "I informed Peter Strzok and another supervisor,” Laycock testified last year in a closed-door Senate hearing. Telephone: After Steele fed the Alfa Bank story to State, it was passed to the FBI’s then-top Eurasia/Russia counterintelligence official, Stephen Laycock (left), who in turn passed it on to lead FBI agent on Trump-Russia, Peter Strzok (right). Facebook/Twitter Steele, who later confessed he was “desperate” to defeat Trump, was the author of the debunked dossier claiming Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election. He even misspelled the name of the Russian bank as “Alpha.” Still, the FBI took his rumors seriously enough to interview tech vendors working for the Trump Organization and obtain warrants to search Trump Tower servers. Within days of receiving the State Department tip, Strzok also used Steele’s dossier to secure a wiretap on Trump adviser Carter Page. Clinton foreign policy adviser and current National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan would put out a written statement trumpeting the Trump-Alfa Bank story, which was shared by then-candidate Clinton on Oct. 31, 2016, after Slate reported on it. Fusion GPS, the Washington opposition-research group that worked for the Clinton campaign as a paid agent, and helped gather dirt on Alfa Bank and draft the materials Sussmann would later submit to the FBI, reportedly pressed Slate to publish the story by the account of its author, journalist Franklin Foer. The Clinton campaign played up the Trump-Alfa Bank story on the eve of the 2016 election. Twitter/@HillaryClinton “This was a highly sophisticated operation using enablers in both the media and federal agencies,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told RealClearInvestigations. The Clinton campaign did not let up even after Trump won the election. In mid-November 2016, it enlisted top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr – whose wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS – to add credibility to the Alfa rumors. That month, Ohr advised the FBI that Steele had told him that the Alfa Bank server was a link to the Trump campaign. Then in early December, Ohr met with the FBI case supervisor who worked for Strzok at least twice. Declassified notes and other records show that during those meetings, Ohr provided him with thumb drives he had received from paid Clinton opposition researcher and Fusion GPS co-founder, Glenn Simpson, and Ohr’s wife and Simpson’s colleague, Nellie. Quoting his Clinton sources, Ohr insisted the alleged backdoor computer channel between Trump and Alfa was real. Bruce Ohr: The Justice Department official -- linked to Clinton opposition research firm Fusion GPS through his wife Nellie, a Fusion employee -- brought the firm's arguments and materials to the FBI. The Global Initiative The FBI spent months investigating the claim, eventually dismissing it as baseless. After the FBI closed the case, Sussmann turned to the nation’s top intelligence agency for assistance, as RCI first reported. In December 2016, Sussmann called then-CIA Director John Brennan’s general counsel – Caroline Krass – to set up a meeting to brief her about the same Alfa Bank rumors. Krass expressed interest in the tip. Then in early February 2017, officials from her office formally sat down with Sussmann for more than an hour to discuss the Trump-Russian bank rumors. Sussmann provided them updated versions of the materials he had handed off to the FBI. Caroline Krass: General counsel to then-CIA Director John Brennan welcomed Sussmann's pitch of the Alfa Bank story, which reportedly passed from the CIA to FBI. CIA/Wikipedia The CIA, in turn, referred the rumors to an FBI liaison for further investigation, according to the sources briefed on his case. Strzok was the lead FBI liaison to the CIA at the time. Among the documents Durham has obtained is a CIA memo memorializing the meeting with Sussmann, according to the sources. In his grand jury indictment, Durham accused Sussmann of also misleading the CIA, which he referred to only as “Agency-2.” The special counsel alleges that Sussmann, as he did when meeting with an FBI official, had also failed to inform contacts at Langley that he was representing a client – in the latter case specifically Joffe – tied to the Clinton campaign operation and who had been promised a high-level job in a Clinton administration. Billing the Democrat’s campaign for his work on the “confidential project," Sussmann recruited Joffe and a team of federal computer contractors to mine proprietary databases containing vast quantities of sensitive, nonpublic Internet data for possible dirt on Trump and his advisers. In a new court document filed last week, Durham revealed his team has obtained more than 80,000 pages of documents in response to grand jury subpoenas issued to more than 15 targets and witnesses, including the computer contractors. Among others receiving subpoenas: political organizations, private firms, tech companies and other entities, including a major university — Georgia Tech — which allegedly participated in the Clinton conspiracy as a Pentagon contractor. Some witnesses have been granted immunity and are cooperating with prosecutors, the sources close to the probe said. Jonathan Turley: "One would expect a CIA official to express reluctance in an investigation that would have a largely domestic focus," says the law professor. CNN “While Sussmann may have hidden his work for the Clinton campaign, this was obviously a useful attack on Trump,” Turley said. “One would expect a CIA official to express reluctance in an investigation that would have a largely domestic focus. But as with the FBI, the Clinton campaign found eager officials to move on any such allegation.” The CIA is largely barred from collecting information inside the United States or on American citizens.“The CIA has no business involving itself in a domestic political issue,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told RCI. “The evidence suggests the primary purpose of the meeting was political." Fitton said his watchdog group has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA demanding all records generated from the contacts Sussmann had with the agency in December 2016 and February 2017. The CIA did not return requests for comment.For good measure, old Clinton hands tried another pressure point. In early February 2017, Clinton's foreign policy adviser Sullivan huddled with Fusion GPS's Simpson and Daniel Jones, an FBI analyst-turned-Democrat-operative, to reboot the same smear campaign against Trump. (As RCI previously reported, Sullivan, who spearheaded the campaign's effort to promote the narrative of a disturbing Trump-Russia relationship via the Alfa Bank story, is under scrutiny for possibly lying to Congress about his role in the operation.) Jones, in turn, reached out to his former colleagues at the FBI, who reopened the investigation into the old allegations of a cyber-link between Trump and Alfa Bank. Jake Sullivan played a pivotal role in the Alfa Bank story as 2016 Clinton foreign policy adviser. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File The next month, acting on Jones’ recycled tip, FBI agents visited the offices of the Pennsylvania company that housed the Trump server, which was actually administered by a third-party hotel promotions firm – Cendyn, based in Florida. But their second investigation proved to be another dead end. The sinister communications Jones claimed were flowing between an alleged Trump server and Alfa Bank were found to be innocuous marketing emails. In other words, spam. Sources say it is odd that FBI headquarters continued to pursue the allegations, because internal FBI communications reveal that the bureau’s own cyber sleuths had pooh-poohed them within days of Sussmann’s briefing, RCI has learned. Strzok himself had been briefed on that assessment of the materials Sussman dropped off at headquarters on Sept. 19, 2016. In fact, in a Sept. 23, 2016, internal message to Strzok, an FBI official relayed his preliminary findings following an interview with Cendyn, the Florida marketing firm that managed the alleged Trump server.“Followed up this morning with Central Dynamics [Cendyn] who confirmed that the mail1.trump-email.com domain is an old domain that was set up in approximately 2009 when they were doing business with the Trump Organization that was never used,” according to the message. Reacting to the Durham indictment, Strzok recently tried to distance himself from the Alfa scandal, insisting in a Lawfare blog: “I had a minor role in the events in question, insofar as I transferred the material Sussman gave to Jim Baker, the FBI’s general counsel at the time, to the personnel who ultimately supervised and looked into the allegations.” Echoing other critics, Strzok complained that Durham – who originally was tapped to investigate the origins of the Russia “collusion” investigation by Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr – is conducting a partisan witch hunt on behalf of Trump. Strzok's claims notwithstanding, Barr's successor, the President Biden-nominated Attorney General Merrick Garland, testified last week that he has renewed funding and staffing for Durham’s far-reaching investigation for the next fiscal year. “[Y]ou can readily assume his budget has been approved,” Garland assured Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee. Tyler Durden Sat, 10/30/2021 - 23:30.....»»

Ken Griffin Says Chicago Violence Like "Afghanistan On A Good Day", Claims Crypto Is "Jihadist" Attack On The Dollar Move over Jamie Dimon. There's another American billionaire financier who appears to be quietly launching a post-business political career. Or at the very least, one could be forgiven for believing Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin's appearance Monday at the Chicago Club of Economics was one long stump speech. Griffin's hour-plus dialogue, which received extensive coverage from the financial press, comes at an interesting time. On the Internet, "conspiracy theorists" (according to Citadel) have continued to raise questions about possible collusion (or other wrongdoings) between Citadel and Robinhood (and one Robinhood exec in particular) before RH pulled the plug on January's meme stonk mania. Meanwhile, over at the SEC, Gary Gensler has said he's looking into regulating - or possibly eliminating or greatly restricting - the practice of 'Payment for Order Flow", whereby electronic retail brokerages like Robinhood sell their customers' orders to Citadel and other market makers (but primarily Citadel). Griffin spoke with Bloomberg's Erik Schatzker about a seemingly endless list of topics, offering imminently quotable lines and thoughtful takes on everything from crypto, to political corruption in Illinois and Chicago's slow decline into anarchy, President Biden's policies, the prospect of another Trump presidency, PFOF, crypto, and of course COVID. The dialogue started with a question on vaccination rates and meandered on from there. Here's a breakdown of what Griffin said by topic. COVID When it comes to containing COVID, Griffin believes that the US's battle against the virus was lost right at the beginning. "The country lost this battle in the first attack, when we weren’t willing to do what it took to shut down America, to truly contain Covid-19. And then to get back out of the seat, and we’ve all just paid a catastrophic price as a result." When it comes to vaccination rates, Griffin believes they have plateaued at an "unacceptably low level". The Fed According to Griffing "the Fed's in a really tough box." The Fed is in "no man's land", Griffin says, and as far as being its chairman, "it is a job I would not be so grateful to have". He also noted that inflationary pressures in the US are "really unsettling." What to do? "If i were Chairman Powell, i stay the course that I'm on as unnerving as that is. to see inflation running this hot is really unsettling." It was at this point that Griffin said something really interesting about the Fed and it's credibility. It's not often that you hear the people who actually run our financial system speak frankly about how it really works. But Griffin essentially said 'the quiet part out loud' when the discussion turned to the Fed's credibility, which we have argued time and again is already in tatters - especially in the aftermath of the pandemic. "And let's be clear right now we don't have price stability. Inflation is at 5% is the highest number people here have seen in their lifetimes," Griffin said. He added that the Fed's position that these pressures are "transitory" is really just "a big bet". But regardless of the course of inflation in the future, Griffin said that the more pressing issue is protecting the Fed from being tainted by the same ugly politics that afflict Capitol Hill. The whole point of a central bank is it's supposed to be independent from politics. Whether this is actually true or not, it's the appearance of neutrality that's necessary to maintain global confidence in the dollar. "We need to maintain the belief in the separation of the Fed from the halls of Washington for the sake of a strong dollar. If you're part of the financial community...you need to push back on that". Fiscal Stimulus Griffin slammed the post-COVID stimulus for being to expansive, and claimed all those benefits are still "disincentivizing lower-wage workers". China The first question Griffin was asked about China was whether he still opposes a "decoupling" between China and the US. According to Griffin, this "decoupling" is already happening. "I think in important ways we have already decoupled." But on a day where Biden's Trade Rep Katherine Tai essentially plagiarized President Trump's tough-on-China economic policies during a major speech, Griffin insisted that there will be drawbacks to what the US is doing - including limiting access to semiconductors and software, which has further motivated Beijing to develop their own. "By restricting Chinese access to semiconductors and American software we have pushed them into a national campaign to eliminate their dependence on the west...imagine a world where there are two totally independent software stacks." When it comes to the technology arms race, Griffin warned, the US is bound to lose. "They graduate about twice as many graduates as we do half of them have stem degrees. They're producing about 5x more talented engineers per annum. The belief that we will be technologically dominant...is naive." Once China surpasses American tech, "not only will they use it in the biggest market in the world which is their own market...but they'll push it to all their trading partners, the Brazils of the world..." Ultimately, "I can imagine a world where we have been divided...and I don't like thinking about that outcome. I can picture a world in 30 to 40 years where, in some sense we have divided the world up between east to west technologically,” Griffin said. TSMC Could Beijing's lust for better semis technology accelerate their takeover of Taiwan? The tiny rogue territory has somehow emerged as a global leader in chip technology and production thanks to TSMC. "They don't have the entire solution, they still buy equipment from around the world, but talk about a powerhouse...and going back to my point earlier, China views Taiwan as part of China, there's no way they will be technologically important against American in the next 20 years. They will get there eventually." The Rust Belt That's not to say there haven't been drawbacks to the US engagement with Beijing, and according to Griffin is the fact that China's advances in manufacturing and the state support allowing their companies to be more competitive helped contribute to the hollowing out of thousands of American factory towns. In retrospect, this was a necessary sacrifice to entice the Chinese to embrace first capitalism, and then democracy. But increasingly it looks like the CCP has no intention to ever loosen its monopoly on power, meaning all those sacrifices were for nothing. "To have the most populous country in the world becoming increasingly capitalistic our belief was that them becoming capitalist would inevitably lead to them becoming a democracy. when we wrote the rules of rht road for them, we did it with the objective of making that happen." "The challenge that we underestimated is how devastating this was going to be for small towns that had its only factory shut down. It wasn't how it was going to impact NYC, Chicago or LA but how it was going to impact a small town in upstate New York. That was a terrible policy miscalculation not done in bad faith...but we didn't have the trainin or relocation strategies to help people get back on their feet." Competition Griffin believes America is facing an identity crisis, and needs to get back to its "core values." And a big part of that is embracing "competition". Enough of this 'everybody gets a trophy' bs. "We need to get back to our core values if we're going to win. What does that mean? Children need to be taught the virtue of earned success. It can't be that every time a race is won, there's two gold medal winners. and earned success is so important to the psychological success of our country. When people know they've done a job well..." there's a sense of pride. The reason why 1 in 10 Americans is severely depressed is that "when life revolves around your instagram and facebook account not how well you do on the sports field, how well you do in class...you've lost your way in life." "We need to teach our children math and science and how to write and how to compete and how to enjoy success....because we need these children to lead this country in 20 years." Griffin also complained that the scientists who developed the COVID jabs weren't properly venereated. "Why haven't we brought the scientists from Pfizer and Moderna to the White House to recognize them for the accomplishment of developing a vaccine in a year. These people are the heroes of our lifetime..." "There are no people who are children are looking up to to say 'I wanna be like her'" Griffin said. Teachers Unions One of the biggest causes of the decay in the quality of public education, according to Griffin, are the teachers unions. He relayed how former Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel went to bat for the schools against the unions...and lost. That's why Chicago has one of the shortest school years, and shortest school days, in the country. "Our mayor went to bat to change that and got batted over the head by the teacher's union," he said. Biden Agenda Moving on to the subject of Biden's economic agenda, which is presently the subject of a Democratic civil war in Washington, Griffin said there was plenty in the bill he liked, but also plenty he opposed, starting with the price tag. "Let's just say thank God for Sen. Manchin," Griffin said. Debt Ceiling Griffin believes the responsibility for raising the debt ceiling lies with the Dems...whether or not that means falling back on reconciliation to bypass a GOP filibuster, or not. "We've played this game of chicken before...I hope somebody blinks before they go over the cliff. I do believe the Democrats have a responsibility....to push this forward." Payment for Order Flow Finally, the big one. Are hidden costs imposed by Citadel and other market makers via payment for order flow (PFOF) helping to line Griffin's pockets at the expense of retail traders? Of course not, he insisted. In fact, if you took away PFOF, Citadel would be just fine..."from the 100,000 feet view" at least, Griffin said. Even though the practice has been a major driver of profits at his firm, Griffin tried to frame PFOF as a nuisance cost, suggesting he would rather not have to "pay" for order flow at all. "Let us hope that we maintain the status quo. brokerage firms have a duty to secure the best price for their customers. That's the premise on which we compete that's the premise on which we win." Ultimately, losing PFoF would be "a huge loss" for traders who enjoy the lowest commissions in history right now (nothing), Griffin claimed, while adding that "let us hope that in Washington, they maintain the status quo." Ken Griffin discusses PFOF (1/2)#BanPFOF #KenGriffinLied pic.twitter.com/nprGSAzT1M — Antonio Martinez (@AntonioTheMexi) October 4, 2021 Ken Griffin discusses PFOF (2/2)#BanPFOF #KenGriffinLied pic.twitter.com/PwnVVNuex5 — Antonio Martinez (@AntonioTheMexi) October 4, 2021 Whatever the SEC decides regarding PFoF, "all i want to know are the rules of the road...If i have to drive on the left I'll drive on the left...just tell me to drive." Crypto While Griffin is certainly amused by crypto, he wishes all this energy could be channeled toward something that doesn't also inadvertently undermine the American financial system. Instead, Griffin sees crypto-mania as a "jihadist call"... Griffin Sees Crypto-Mania as ‘Jihadist Call’ Against the Dollar A mania which your Robinhood subsidiary is eagerly fanning... — zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 4, 2021 ...to attack and undermine the dollar. "I wish all this passion directed at crypto was redirected at making American stronger," adding that backing bitcoin over the dollar was a "Jihadist call". He also made a crack about how terribly energy inefficient bitcoin is, repeating a longstanding criticism. While he certainly has ethical objections to crypto, Griffin says he would absolutely let Citadel to get involved in the market if it's ever regulated. "If it were regulated, I would trade it because..it would be good to have a Tier 1 firm making prices." Chicago Griffin saved most of his anger for Gov. Pritzker and other Illinois elected officials. He started with a story of a conversation between him and Pritzker where Griffin claimed the governor refused to send in the National Guard to quell violence in the city because of the political optics. Since the last time Griffin spoke at the Economic Club in 2013, the City has gotten even worse. "Since the last time I spoke in 2013, 25,000 of my fellow Chicagoans have been shot. It is a disgrace that our governor will not insert himself into the challenge of addressing crime in our city. It won't look good to have men and women on corners on Michigan Avenue with assault weapons...well, if it would save the life of one child, I don't care. We need to try and start to take the state back inch by inch from people who put their politics first and the people second." On the subject of police, Griffin said: "We need our police officers to know that they are respected and welcomed as Americans." In fact, Griffin says Citadel has already started to dial back its presence in Chicago because of the safety issue before sharing an amusing crack about Chicago being more dangerous than Afghanistan. "We aren't as much in Chicago. It's becoming ever more difficult to have this as our global headquarters, a city that has so much violence. I mean Chicago is like Afghanistan on a good day. They tried to car jack the security detail that sits outside my apartment. It just shows you how deep crime runs in this city. There is nowhere you can feel safe walking home at 2130 at night. And it's really hard to recruit people to Chicago. When they read the headlines, theey know the facts. 20 years ago, this was a great place to raise a family...I could say that and be genuine...I can't give that speech today." As for New York City, Griffin warned that many of the same things he has seen in Chicago are starting to take place in New York City. Griffin added that Citadel's next big expansion will be office space in Miami, and that the company's time of remaining headquarter in Chicago will be measured in "years not decades". The Sun Belt Moving on from the Chicago discussion, Griffin believes that across the US, coastal blue states with high taxes will start to lose their economic edge to the Sun Belt, which has more business-friendly regulations. "Conditions are Better across the sun belt states, less regulation less taxes a workforce that's generally of the ethos of 'I'm here to earn it'. Northern cities still have a considerable advantage...those schools anchor our great northern cities. the south doesn't have that yet writ large. But as universities in the south continue to get better, you're going to see the balance of power shift from the north to the south as the ease of doing business in the south trumps the ease of hiring top employees in the north." Trump Finally, the big one. When it comes to President Trump, Griffin admits his economic policies were "pretty damn good." However, when asked about the prospect of another campaign in 2020, he said that "it's time for America to move on. The 4 years under president trump were so divisive it was not constructive for the country." He also said he was "appalled" by Trump's willingness to play identity politics. * * * Griffin's speech before the Chicago Club  the first major public appearance by Griffin since the "GameStopped" hearings back in Feb. Tyler Durden Mon, 10/04/2021 - 17:20.....»»

Trump in a statement late Thursday did not seem aware that the result of Arizona audit, which he has hyped for months, did not go his way. A composite image showing Former President Donald Trump and a scene from the vote recount in Maricopa County, Arizona. AP Trump on Thursday said Democrats were trying to distract from the release of the Arizona audit. He seemed unaware that a draft result had been released and confirmed Joe Biden's win. Trump allies had hyped the audit claiming it would uncover a vast plot to steal the 2020 election. See more stories on Insider's business page. Former President Donald Trump on Thursday angrily accused Democrats of seeking to distract from the release of the result of the controversial vote audit in Maricopa County, Arizona.However, he appears to have launched the attack unaware of that details of the audit had already been released, confirming that the process confirmed that President Joe Biden won. In the statement late Thursday, Trump hit out at the House of Representatives commission investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, which on Thursday subpoenaed several allies and aides of the president.Trump claimed the move was timed to distract from the expected release on Friday of the result of the Maricopa County audit by the firm Cyber Ninjas.The attracted criticism from state election officials and some Republican officials, who accused Cyber Ninjas of conducting a shambolic process, designed to substantiate right-wing conspiracy theories and undermine Biden's win. The result of process has been eagerly anticipated by supporters of the former president, who hoped that it would undermine Joe Biden's surprise victory in the state, which helped secure him the presidency in November 2020.-Daniel Chaitin (@danielchaitin7) September 24, 2021Trump's statement, made at around 11 p.m. ET, said: "Interesting that the Unselect Committee of political hacks 'dropped' their subpoena request the night before Arizona is expected to announce its findings from the Forensic Audit on voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election Scam."He went on to praise Cyber Ninja as "highly respected auditors" and said "everybody will be watching Arizona tomorrow."But Trump apparently didn't realise that news organizations in Arizona obtained draft copies of the audit result.Reports based on its results went live shortly before trump's statement, and made clear that the recount showed that Biden had won, in line with the official result.In fact, the audit found that Biden had won the county by 99 more votes than in the original tally, while Trump received 261 fewer votes than the in the original vote count. It was back in February that the Republican-led state Senate commissioned Cyber Ninja to conducts the audit, saying it was necessary to establish faith in the integrity of the election.The audit was launched despite there being no evidence of fraud or other malpractice that could affect its results. It came after Trump for months pushed his "Big Lie" that the election was stolen from as a result of fraud. In a statement early Friday, Jack Sellers, Chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said that the original count had been accurate and the result was the "will of the voters." "That should be the end of the story. Everything else is just noise," he said. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The Department of Justice indicted former President Donald Trump in connection with classified records discovered at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Former President Donald Trump.Scott Olson/Getty Images The Department of Justice reportedly indicted former President Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago records case. It's the first time a former president has been charged with a federal crime. Trump is expected to appear in federal court in Miami next Tuesday. The Justice Department brought an indictment against Donald Trump on Thursday over the former president's hoarding of government records, according to the New York Times, citing multiple people familiar with the matter.The precise charges weren't immediately known, but the Times reported that one person briefed on the matter said there were seven counts.With the indictment, Trump became the first current or former president in American history to face federal criminal charges. The indictment sets the stage for an extraordinary prosecution pitting the Justice Department against a former president who is campaigning to return to the White House.The indictment may also further radicalize Trump's MAGA base of supporters. Trump has alluded to the possibility of violence if he is arrested, as he did in the run-up to his indictment by a New York grand jury.Trump said in a Truth Social post that he would appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday afternoon."I have been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM. I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States," he said on Truth Social, before falsely claiming he won the 2020 election.Prior to Trump's indictment, federal prosecutors told his attorneys in early June that he was a target of the investigation. Some of Trump's close aides and allies, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and ex-spokesperson Taylor Budowich, testified before grand jurors who brought the indictment. Smith's indictment is the second pending criminal case against Trump. In April, the Manhattan District Attorney's office brought a 34-count indictment against the former president, alleging he falsified business records in connection with payments to Stormy Daniels designed to keep her silent ahead of the 2016 election about an alleged affair she says she had with him.Trump has pleaded not guilty in the Manhattan case, which is scheduled to go to trial in March of 2024.The existence of the federal criminal investigation became public when the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in early August 2022, seizing boxes of documents Trump took from the White House when he left office. According to the unsealed warrant, the feds were investigating whether Trump broke three laws, including the Espionage Act, and whether he obstructed justice.Earlier in 2022, Trump turned over 15 boxes of documents — including some marked as classified and "top secret" — at the request of the National Archives. But National Archives officials and federal investigators believed he held on to more — despite his attorneys promising otherwise — leading to the search on his Florida estate. Trump had reportedly held on to some classified documents with explosive national security ramifications, including one about a potential military attack on Iran.Trump's lawyers have argued that the White House process for handling classified information differs from other parts of the government and that any case should be handled as a civil matter rather than a criminal one. Trump has claimed that as president, he had the power to declassify documents simply "by thinking about it."The indictment is now a stress test on the Justice DepartmentFor the Justice Department, Trump's November campaign announcement only intensified what was already a politically charged inquiry into the former president's retention of classified documents and other sensitive materials following his departure from the White House. Within days of the announcement, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee the investigation, along with a separate inquiry related to efforts by Trump and his political allies to overturn the 2020 election.Those dual investigations into the former president have tested Garland as he's striven to restore the Justice Department's independence on the heels of the politicization of the Trump era. In announcing his selection of Smith, Garland said the appointment underscored the Justice Department's "commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters."That messaging did little to quell claims by Trump and his Republican allies that the Biden administration was waging a politically motivated investigation into a top contender for the GOP nomination. Trump quickly criticized the special counsel's appointment as "disgraceful."President Joe Biden also faces a probe over classified records. After disclosures that classified records were found in spaces associated with Biden prior to his presidency, documents that were returned to the government, Garland named a separate special counsel in a move that blindsided the White House.With Trump's indictment, the Justice Department and the judge overseeing the case must now navigate months of court proceedings related to the prosecution as the former president campaigns for a return to public office.Trump has warned of a violent response to any indictment on criminal charges. In September, he said there would be "problems" like "we've never seen" before in the event of his criminal indictment.Trump supporters cheered the former president along as he gave his campaign-style speech at Mar-a-Lago during his 2024 presidential campaign.Kimberly Leonard/InsiderGrand juries in Washington, DC and Miami have been hearing evidence in the government records case, with Smith reportedly preferring to bring charges in Florida if that is where the bulk of the alleged crimes were committed. According to the Washington Post, prosecutors have taken interest in a statement Trump drafted in 2022 claiming he'd given "everything" back to the government.Trump faces other legal risks as well.Aside from the case over government records, Smith is overseeing a separate grand jury investigation into Trump's role in trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power between himself and Biden.Trump has maintained the falsehood that he was the true victor of the 2020 presidential election. In the months following his loss tried to overturn Biden's victory in court, pressured state officials falsely declare him the winner in states where voters chose Biden, and hosted a rally in Washington, DC, shortly before his supporters stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.In Atlanta, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is also overseeing a criminal investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn election results. Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes" needed to snatch the state's vote total away from Biden's victory. His allies in the state's Republican party, also under investigation, plotted to send fake electors to Congress to vote for Trump even though he lost the state.Willis convened a special grand jury panel to investigate Trump and the fake electors, and is currently weighing whether to recommend indictments to an ordinary grand jury.On the civil litigation front, Trump faces numerous other challenges between now and election day.A sprawling fraud case against him and the Trump Organization from the New York Attorney General's office is set to go to trial in October. Several live legal claims from E. Jean Carroll, Michael Cohen, a group of plaintiffs who alleged he scammed them with a multi-level marketing scheme back in his days on "The Apprentice" are all making their way through the courts.Editor's note: Portions of this article were prepared in the weeks preceding Trump's indictment.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The DOJ has not yet confirmed former President Donald Trump's claims. Former President Donald Trump speaks to supporters at his rally in Waco, Texas, on March 25, 2023.AP Photo/Evan VucciFormer President Donald Trump broke the news on Truth Social that he has been indicted.The New York Times and other outlets have now confirmed Trump has been indicted.The indictment is 7 counts, per multiple reports.Former President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social Thursday evening that he has been indicted in relation to the Department of Justice's investigation into the potential mishandling of classified documents. The New York Times and other outlets have since confirmed the indictment."I have been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM," Trump wrote. "I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States, who received far more votes than any sitting President in the History of our Country, and is currently leading, by far, all Candidates, both Democrat and Republican, in Polls of the 2024 Presidential Election. I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!"ABC and CNN report the former president has been indicted on 7 charges in relation to the investigation into his mishandling of classified documents.This would be the first time a former president has faced federal charges. Trump was indicted by New York prosecutors earlier this year over hush money payments paid to the adult entertainer Stormy Daniels.A spokesman for the DOJ declined to comment.This is a breaking story. Check back for updates.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

In this article, we will take a loot at the 20 most dangeorus countries for LGBTQ+ American travelers. If you want to skip our detailed analysis, you may jump to 5 Most Dangerous Countries for LGBTQ+ American Travelers. Anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments are getting louder and wilder. Specifically, businesses that are supporting the LGBTQ+ community are under […] In this article, we will take a loot at the 20 most dangeorus countries for LGBTQ+ American travelers. If you want to skip our detailed analysis, you may jump to 5 Most Dangerous Countries for LGBTQ+ American Travelers. Anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments are getting louder and wilder. Specifically, businesses that are supporting the LGBTQ+ community are under fire from conservative segments of the society. LGBT Capital notes that the purchasing power of the community is $3.9 trillion globally. While professing support for these communities allows them to get a hold of a significant slice of the pie, it’s also drawing significant backlash toward them. Rainbow Capitalism June is Pride Month for the LGBTQ+ community. Every year, millions of spectators gather for the New York Pride March, celebrating LGBTQ+ legal rights, social and self-acceptance, and also their pride. Also known as “pink capitalism” or “pinkwashing,” rainbow capitalism is when consumerism and capitalism get involved in the LGBT movement. Corporations have been criticized for expressing their support for the pride movement without actually having equity or inclusion policies in place. Many businesses are joining in the event with their marketing campaigns, queer influencer partnerships, and pride-logo products to demonstrate their support for Pride Month. LGBTQ+ individuals travel from all over the world to attend such pride events sponsored by LGBT-friendly companies. One prime example of a company that has been criticized for alleged “rainbow washing” is the retail giant Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT). While the company has been showcasing its support for pride month for many years, this year, it has received significant backlash from the LGBTQ community and its supporters for taking a stand without “conviction”. Being a platinum sponsor of NYC Pride, Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) recently withdrew its Pride merchandise after receiving backlash and potential threats towards the safety of its workers. Evidently, Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) has shown that mass boycotts, lost revenue, and brand-harm can intimidate corporations from coming forward on their stance in regards to the LGBT community. Dangerous Countries for LGBTQ+ American Travelers 2023 has witnessed more than 417 anti-LGBT bills being introduced in state legislatures across the United States. However, its still compartively a far safer country for the LGBT+ community. We have also covered the most gay-friendly cities in the US, which you can take a look at. These include Seattle, Albany and Austin, among others, which can also be regarded as the best places to live for the LGBT+ community. We have covered the safest countries for lgbt+ community to live, as well, in our list of the most LGBT-friendly countries in the world. However, the LGBTQ+ American travelers should stay cautious, especially when traveling to other countries. Many of the developing economies, such as Nigeria, criminalize LGBT+ rights, with even death penalties in countries that are far more conservative. Another dangerous country for LGBTQ+ American travelers is Qatar. Acts of homosexuality in the country are awarded the death penalty. In some other countries’, LGBTQ+ communities should avoid traveling to Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Iran. According to the U.S. State Department travel advisory, lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, queer, and other intersex travelers may face unique challenges when traveling to other countries. Approximately 70 countries consider consensual same-sex relations a crime, which is why it’s important to go through documents such as Traveler’s Checklist and Country Information pages specific to LGBT+ American travelers. Many international travel and vacation companies, such as Airbnb, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABNB) and American Airlines Group Inc. (NASDAQ:AAL), are pro-LGBTQ+ companies, providing them with great travel experiences and accommodations. With regard to Airbnb, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABNB), not only is the company a great place to work with for this community, but it is also a top choice for travelers looking for gay-friendly or Pro-LGBTQ+ rentals. Airbnb, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABNB) listings have a no-discrimination policy its users have to follow. A recent case had a user, who was suspended due to a violation of the said policy, after refusing to rent to a gay couple. Similarly, American Airlines Group Inc. (NASDAQ:AAL) has been the first major airline to protect LGBT team members from discrimination. Being the most gay-friendly airline, American Airlines Group Inc. (NASDAQ:AAL) has been flying with pride along with other airlines such as Alaska Airlines and Atlas Air. Many businesses have also been emerging that are specifically catering to the LGBTQ+ community. With regards to travel, top LGBT travel companies include HE Travel, RSVP Vacation, Out Adventures, and VentureOut, to name a few. Mybona/Shutterstock.com Methodology In order to compile the list of most dangerous countries for LGBTQ+ travelers, we have used Gay Travel Index 2023 from Spartacus, LGBTQ+ Travel Index from Asher & Lyric, and Global Peace Index. The weighted average formula was used to assign weights to the above indexes and calculate an Insider Monkey score. Gay Travel Index and Asher & Lyric Travel Index were assigned equal weights of 40% each, while Global Peace Index was assigned 20% weightage. The weighted averages determined an Insider Monkey average score for each country on which the rankings are based. The countries are ranked in descending order from the highest to the lowest score. Here are the most dangerous countries for LGBT+ American travelers: 20. Malaysia Insider Monkey Score: 157 While Malaysia is a beautiful developing country in the Southeast, gay travelers may not be able to enjoy its gorgeous beaches and World Heritage Sites. The country severely punishes homosexuality, and state-backed discrimination is a major reason why LGBT+ American travelers may face challenges, prejudices, and threats on their visit to the country. Moreover, the population is generally conservative. As such, the country’s tourism minister has also denied the existence of this community, and if found, homosexuality is punishable with up to 20 years in prison, fines, and whipping. 19. Tunisia Insider Monkey Score: 160 While Tunisia wholeheartedly accepts tourists, the LGBT community is not received with open arms. Homosexuality is a crime in the country that is punishable by up to 3 years imprisonment. As such, American LGBT+ travelers are advised to exercise discretion when traveling. Article 230 of the Penal Code condemns indecent exposure and indecent assault. 18. Tanzania Insider Monkey Score: 162 Tanzania is an international hub for tourists and is known for its natural parks, gorgeous beaches, and wilderness areas. Like many other countries, Tanzania has proclaimed homosexuality as illegal, and anyone found can face a maximum penalty of 30 years or even life imprisonment. These laws are unlikely to be changed anytime soon. Even the residents of Tanzania consider it unlawful and an unnatural way of life. The general attitude is the same for others from the LGBT+ community like bisexual and trans individuals. 17. Russia Insider Monkey Score: 162 In June 2013, Russia passed a new law concerning the “propaganda” of non-traditional sexual relations for minors. Last year, the so-called propaganda was extended by the lower house of parliament. Even the promotion of homosexuality online, in books, or in films is banned. Anya’s activities or conduct will be subjected to major fines and penalties. Foreigners can also be expelled if they are found of non-compliance. The situation is worse in Russian republics like Chechnya. 16. Kuwait Insider Monkey Score: 164 Tourism is increasing in Kuwait, but the attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors that LGBTs may face are different compared to non-LGBT tourists. Impersonating the opposite sex and homosexual relations are illegal in the country. As such, tourists should refrain from attending parties or events that are controversial in the eyes of the law. Public “immorality” is prohibited; however, impersonating the same sex has now been outlawed. 15. Brunei Insider Monkey Score: 165 Another dangerous country for LGBT+ American travelers is Brunei. Spartacus Travel Index ranks the country at 159, while A&F ranks it at number 203. Homosexuality is a crime in Brunei, with its punishment being death by stoning. This is applicable to all residents and tourists coming into the country, which is why it’s best to exercise discretion when traveling here. 14. Uganda Insider Monkey Score: 165 Uganda is one of the most populous countries in Africa and apparently one of the most dangerous countries to travel to for the LGBTQ+ community. The Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 has pushed the country further into the spotlight. Those found engaging in same-sex relations will be imprisoned for a lifetime or charged with the death penalty. Travelers must exercise discretion when visiting the country or risk the charges stated above. 13. United Arab Emirates Insider Monkey Score: 167 UAE is increasingly becoming a dangerous place for the LGBTQ+ community. Millions of visitors come to see Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but it can be the among the worst places for LGBT American travelers. UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iran are all setting up coordinated efforts to crack down on their existence in the Emirates, and both the locals and foreigners are to bear the brunt. Even wearing female apparel by a male can carry the sentence of up to one year in prison as well as a fine of 10,000 dirhams. As such, homosexuality is strictly forbidden and punishable by law. 12. Malawi Insider Monkey Score: 168 Malawi strictly forbids homosexuality, which is why it is not safe for LGBT+ travelers to visit the country. Punishments for such acts are very strict, with same-sex acts resulting in 14 years in prison for men and up to 5 years imprisonment for women. Men cannot even keep long hair, and any man found having hair longer than their mouth can receive imprisonment for up to six months. The public sentiments regarding homosexuality aren’t encouraging either, which is why the country is not a good place to travel to for this community. 11. South Sudan Insider Monkey Score: 169 While South Sudan gained independence from Sudan back in 2011, the country still uses extreme interpretations of the Sharia law. This law implies that all acts of homosexuality are forbidden in the country, and punishments could range anywhere between lashes and even death. Even the majority of the population in the country is against such acts and individuals, which is why it is one of the worst countries to travel to for the LGBTQ+ community. 10. Ethiopia Insider Monkey Score: 171 While Ethiopia is already a worst travel destination due to its civil unrest, crime, conflicts, and terrorism, it is even worst for LGBT+ American travelers. LGBTQ+ community has no rights in the country, and the general population is against homosexuality as well. Same-sex relations are outlawed, and those found guilty can face imprisonment of up to 15 years. Some religious groups are very extreme and urge authorities to ban trips that are organized by tour operators catering to this population. 9. Sudan Insider Monkey Score: 173 Similar to Sudan, homosexuality is a crime that is punishable under the country’s law. The general population is also against the idea of homosexuality, and overall it is not a safe country to travel to. Spartacus ranks the country at 159, while Asher & Lyric places it at number 195 to depict how far this country is behind on safety for LGBTQ travelers. The Sudanese Penal Code criminalizes acts of sodomy, “indecent acts”, “indecent acts in public spaces”, “seduction”, and materials that are contrary to “morals”. Hence, it is one of the most dangerous countries for gay travelers. 8. Egypt Insider Monkey Score: 174 Egypt has always been a traveler’s favorite, thanks to its huge pyramids and historical and religious significance. However, the country holds negative laws pertaining to homosexuality, which is why it has made it to our list. Since 2013, more than 250 LGBT individuals have been arrested in the country, and there is a consistent crackdown on such individuals. Same-sex acts can lead to up to 3 years’ imprisonment, while possession of homosexual materials will lead to two years’ prison along with a fine. LGBTQ+ travelers are strictly advised not to disclose their sexual identity to anyone or use any dating applications in the country. 7. Iran Insider Monkey Score: 181 LGBTQ+ travelers must avoid traveling to Iran due to extreme punishments for acts of homosexuality, transgenderism and bisexuality. Same-sex acts in the country will be subjected to 31 lashes, while intercourse will lead to 100 lashes or the death penalty. More than 5,000 gays and lesbians have been executed in the country for such offenses since 1979. 6. Libya Insider Monkey Score: 184 Libya is an overall dangerous country to travel to regardless of the sexual orientation of individuals. Terrorism, violence, and civil unrest have made the country very unsafe. Moreover, the laws prohibit any or all activities that fall outside of heterosexual marriage. Anyone found going against these laws is subjected to amputation and flogging. Click to continue reading and see the 5 Most Dangerous Countries for LGBTQ+ American Travelers.  Suggested Articles: 25 Most LGBTQ-Friendly Countries in the World 15 Most Powerful Currencies in the World 20 American Cities With the Highest Uninsured Rates Disclosure: none. 20 Most Dangerous Countries for LGBTQ+ American Travelers is originally published on Insider Monkey......»»

The Cloward-Piven Strategy Authored by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com, Overburden the bureaucracy to break the system, create controlled chaos, usurp power as civil unrest peaks, and offer government aid as the only solution. This was the basis behind the Cloward-Piven strategy created by sociologists Frances Fox Piven and her husband, Richard Cloward. The four steps of the Cloward-Piven Strategy: 1. Overload and Break the Welfare System 2. Have Chaos Ensue 3. Take Control in the Chaos 4. Implement Socialism and Communism through Government Force The couple published their theory in The Nation Magazine on May 2, 1966, entitled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty.” This was a decade of political activism in America. The war in Vietnam was raging on and the alternative hippie lifestyle became prominent as people protested the violence. The Black Freedom Movement and the push for equal civil rights had peaked and helped to end the Jim Crow laws in the South by 1965. The LA race riots, also known as the Watts Rebellion, occurred in 1965 as well after the police beat a black man who was arrested for a DUI. That particular riot lasted for six days and led to 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries, and over 3,000 arrests. This began a string of riots in America where black Americans and supporters clashed with police, similar to the events that occurred after the death of George Floyd that started the Black Lives Matter movement. We had major political activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. making real change in America. The intelligence agencies had a close eye on him, and his death in 1968 is a topic for another post. On the other side were the likes of Malcom X, who originally did not advocate for peace as King did. The cohesive movement fell apart with mass unrest and no one at the helm. The movement began with African Americans asking for basic human rights and understandable anger. The purpose of the movement, again similar to BLM, became lost, and the government aimed to use the civil unrest to its advantage. “[T]he strategy we propose, is a massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls,” the sociologists wrote in their theory. This theory aimed to overburden social programs at the state level to give the federal government the power to control the people. “Widespread campaigns to register the eligible poor for welfare aid, and to help existing recipients obtain their full benefits, would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments. These disruptions would generate severe political strains, and deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the white working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor.” Cloward and Piven noted that civil unrest was necessary to create change and encouraged the government to antagonize the masses. “The poor are most visible and proximate in the local community; antagonism toward them (and toward the agencies which are implicated with them) has always, therefore, been more intense locally than at the federal level.” As the anger brews and protests erupt, the government will lasso in the masses, acted as both the hero and the villain. “In order to generate a crisis, the poor must obtain benefits, which they have forfeited. Until now, they have been inhibited from asserting claims by self-protective devices within the welfare system: its capacity to limit information, to intimidate applicants, to demoralize recipients, and arbitrarily to deny lawful claims.” Tell the people that they are victims and instill a sense of entitlement for their neighbor’s assets. Remind the people consistently that they are oppressed and only an equal distribution of wealth can save them from the confines of poverty. Cloward and Piven insisted that hard work could not “elevate the poor en-mass from poverty.” “The ultimate objective of this strategy–to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income,” the theory clearly stated. The theory stated that the creation of unions was a good start to bargain collectively, but still not enough to solve poverty. “Union leaders have understood that their strength derives almost entirely from their capacity to provide economic rewards to members,” the theory noted. “A federal program of income redistribution has become necessary to elevate the poor en masse from poverty,” meaning a shift away from capitalism entirely. Cloward and Piven stated that a minimum standard of living must be provided to the people through federal welfare. That right must be guaranteed to end oppression, thereby ensuring Guaranteed Basic Income. Furthermore, there could be no conditions for benefits as it “results in violations of civil liberties.” Therefore, expecting able-bodied people to work would be an attack on the welfare system. The sociologists insisted that most people were in fact eligible for welfare and encouraged the government to advertise in brochures, schools, stores, churches, civic centers, and public housing projects. They even advised the government to send people door-to-door to explain to people that they are oppressed and deserving of GBI as a “civil education drive will lend it legitimacy.” “As the crisis develops, it will be important to use the mass media to inform the broader liberal community about the inefficiencies and injustices of welfare.” To succeed, the shift away from capitalism required “mass influence” and “publicly visible disruption.” “Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest, which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognizable eruption to public attention.” The bigger the crisis, the more power the government could usurp. They noted that politicians paid attention to massive uprisings, and they had been used to “reinforce the allegiance of growing ghetto constituencies to the national Democratic Administration.” The sociologists noted that the Conservative Republicans would decry a public welfare system and that the Democrats needed to appeal to the emotions of the people over logic. They also urged for “a coalition between poor whites and poor Negroes” to turn the race war into class warfare. “Once eligibility for basic food and rent grants is established, the drain on local resources persists indefinitely.” Cloward and Piven wanted to overburden the welfare system at the state level to eliminate state rights. Therefore, under this theory, government is encouraged to market a crisis, antagonize the people, and offer a solution. The only solution being to replace capitalism with socialism or communism by which the people would be entirely dependent on government. You will own nothing and be happy. Tyler Durden Tue, 06/06/2023 - 16:20.....»»

These three women were special forces agents who bore great risks to help make the largest amphibious landing in history a victory for the Allies. Lise De Baissac was a leader in the French Resistance whose efforts contributed to the success of the D-Day landings.Eric Harlow/Getty ImagesWomen played key roles in D-Day, the Allied assault on Nazi-held France that is the largest amphibious invasion in history."People tend to think women were 'just' secretarial couriers and messengers," said journalist Sarah Rose. "No, there were female special forces agents on the ground and working to keep the Allies from being blown back into the water."These are three of the British agents who contributed to the Allied victory in Normandy and the liberation of Western Europe.Visit INSIDER's homepage for more stories.It has been 79 years since upward of 150,000 Allied troops began storming the beaches of Normandy by air, land, and sea. As the June 6 anniversary of the largest amphibious assault in military history approaches, journalist Sarah Rose illuminated several less widely known combat heroes who fought for the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe in Operation Overlord: Andrée Borrel, Lise de Baissac, and Odette Sansom. They are among the 39 female agents who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's secret World War II intelligence agency created in 1940 to "set Europe ablaze.""Women are the hidden figures of D-Day," says Rose, who started researching the history of women in combat and was surprised to learn that their roles dated back to World War II. "People tend to think women were 'just' secretarial couriers and messengers. No, there were female special forces agents on the ground and working to keep the Allies from being blown back into the water. They did what men did. They led men."In her book, D-Day Girls: THE SPIES WHO ARMED THE RESISTANCE, SABOTAGED THE NAZIS, AND HELPED WIN WORLD WAR II, Rose chronicles three of these agents' contributions to the Allied victory in Normandy and the liberation of Western Europe.Andrée Borrel, the first female combat paratrooper, fought for the liberation of France until Nazis executed her a month after D-Day.Aliases: Monique; Denise Urbain, Whitebeam. 1919-1944UK National ArchivesBorn to a working-class family on the outskirts of Paris after World War I, Borrel left school at 14. She had a job at a Paris bakery counter when World War II broke out.Read more: 8 famous people who served on D-DayOnce the war began, Borrel left Paris and took a crash course in nursing with the Red Cross.The German military defeated France in June 1940, but many French citizens took up arms in a resistance to Adolf Hitler and his troops.German Federal ArchiveAfter a stint treating people wounded by the German Army, she joined a group of French Resistance operatives organizing and operating one of the country's largest underground escape networks, the Pat O'Leary line. She aided at least 65 Allied evaders (mainly British Royal Air Force airmen shot down over enemy territory) on their journeys out of France to Spain through the Pyrenees. When she herself got ratted out, she escaped to Lisbon, Portugal. She then moved to London, eager to continue fighting for the liberation of France. In the spring of 1942, the SOE recruited her. She was trained not only to jump behind enemy lines, but also to spy on, sabotage, and kill Axis troops occupying her home country. Borrel parachuted into France in September of 1942, becoming the first female combat agent to do so. She worked as a courier for the SOE network Physician (nicknamed "Prosper"), which raised bands of Resistance members in the north to carry out guerilla attacks against Nazi troops. Moving between Paris and the countryside, she coordinated aerial supply drops and recruited, armed, and trained Resistance members. She rose to second in command of the network's Paris circuit, which was also funneling enemy intelligence back to the Allies in London. She was in the SOE's first training class for female agents, where she learned skills from hand-to-hand combat to Morse code. When asked, "How might you kill a Nazi using what you have on you?" she is said to have responded: "I would jam a pencil through his brain. And he'd deserve it." Her commanding officer described her as "the best of us all."Read more: Here's how the Allies began to reclaim Europe from the NazisThe Nazis arrested Borrel in 1943 and sent her to a concentration camp.Borrel was sent to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in July 1944, a month after D-Day.WindofkeltiaNazis, allegedly leveraging intelligence from a double agent, arrested Borrel and fellow Physician leaders in June 1943. After being interrogated and imprisoned around Paris, she was transferred to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in July 1944 with three other female SOE agents and executed a month after D-Day. Even from prison, she is said to have continued fighting by inserting coded messages about her captors in several letters to her sister. She was 24.Honors: Croix de Guerre, Medal of the Resistance, the King's Commendation for Brave ConductLise de Baissac parachuted into France twice and became the No. 2 commander of a French Resistance group fighting Nazis during the Battle of Normandy.1905-2004 Aliases: Artist, Odile, Irène, Marguerite, AdèleRecords of Special Operations ExecutiveAndrée Borrel was the first female SOE agent to parachute into France during World War II, but her jumping partner, 37-year-old Lise de Baissac, was right behind her. The daughter of a wealthy family in British-ruled Mauritius, de Baissac was in France when Hitler's troops moved into Paris in 1940. She fled to the south and then to London. When the SOE started recruiting multilingual women as agents, she joined the fight.After parachuting into Central France with Borrel, de Baissac set up an Allied safe house for agents in the town of Poitiers in western France, selecting an apartment near Gestapo headquarters — a hiding-in-plain-sight strategy she felt would arouse less suspicion. She bicycled around occupied territory as a liaison among different underground networks, often riding 60-70 kilometers a day and carrying contraband. On one occasion, a Nazi stopped her and her clandestine radio operator, patting them down. The officer searched them for guns, which they didn't have, so he let them go. She'd later report that a radio crystal fell out of her skirt as she was leaving but that she leaned over, grabbed the crystal off the ground, and pedaled on. In August of 1943, when her network in Poitiers was blown, the SOE airlifted her back to England by Lysander aircraft. She trained new female SOE recruits in Scotland. In April of 1944, after recovering from a broken leg, she jumped back into occupied France. She made her way to Normandy, joining her brother, fellow SOE agent Claude de Baissac, in leading a network of Resistance fighters in Normandy. They carried out attacks to weaken Nazi communication and transportation circuits, strategically cutting phone lines and blowing up roads, railways, and bridges to hinder the movement of German reinforcements Hitler was ordering to the beaches.De Baissac raced out of Paris to assist the allies when she learned D-Day was imminent.Sherman tanks of British 30th Corps passing through Bayeux, France.Imperial War MuseumOn June 5, 1944, de Baissac was in Paris recruiting when she learned D-Day was imminent. She biked for three days, speeding through Nazi formations, sleeping in ditches, and reaching her brother and their Resistance circuit headquarters in Normandy. As the bloody Normandy campaign raged and the Allies struggled to penetrate the Axis front, the de Baissacs continued leading espionage and sabotage operations. They gathered intelligence on enemy positions and transmitted messages back to England, helping lay the groundwork for Operation Cobra, the Allied breakout in which U.S. Army forces came out of the peninsula and pierced Hitler's front line seven weeks after D-Day. After the war, she worked for the BBC.Honors: MBE, Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur Croix de Guerre avec PalmeOdette Sansom blew up Nazi train lines and, upon being arrested and tortured, told Gestapo officers: “I have nothing to say.”Aliases: Lise 1912-1995Imperial War MuseumOdette Sansom was a 28-year-old homemaker in Somerset, England when she answered the British War Office's call for images of the French coastline, offering photographs she had from her childhood. Born in France as "Odette Brailly" in 1912, she had lost her father in the final months of the World War I. With World War II raging and her English husband already away fighting in the British Army, she didn't take lightly the decision to leave her three young daughters. But with Hitler already occupying her old home and threatening her new one, she felt compelled to join the fight.She was tough, determined, and persistent. When a concussion during parachute training left her unable to jump into France, she docked in Gibraltar on a gunrunner disguised as a sardine fishing boat, only to arrive in France's "free" zone the same week in November 1942 that Hitler's forces began occupying the region. So began several months working as a courier in SOE agent Capt. Peter Churchill's network, Spindle. Churchill relied heavily on her to set up clandestine radio networks, coordinate parachute drops, and arm Resistance fighters in the Rhône Alps in preparation for D-Day. She and Churchill fell in love and continued working together mobilizing Resistance members in southeast France until April 1943, when the Gestapo arrested them. Knowing that they were at risk of being executed as spies, she convinced their captors that her commanding officer was a relative of UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and that she was his wife and only in France at her urging. Peter Churchill was not, in fact, related to Britain's prime minister, but Sansom figured that if she could trick the Germans into thinking they were VIPs, there would be incentive to keep them alive. Sansom emerged from the largest, most lethal women’s concentration camp in history with evidence used to convict its leaders of war crimes.Sansom with her then fiance Capt. Peter Churchill in 1947.Getty ImagesWhile Sansom was imprisoned around France and then at Ravensbrück concentration camp, enduring solitary confinement and somewhere between 10-14 torture sessions – she survived.By the time Ravensbrück was evacuated in the spring of 1945, Sansom's back was broken, and she had been starved and beaten, with her toenails pulled out and her body burned in attempts to get her to reveal information about her fellow agents. She is said to have revealed nothing.In the years after the war, Sansom's testimony was later to convict Ravensbrück camp commandant Fritz Suhren, as well as other SS officers, of war crimes. Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945 came less than a year after the sweeping invasions that began the Battle of Normandy, now memorialized as "D-Day."Honors: George Cross, Member of the Order of the British Empire, Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur   Editor's Note: This post was initially published on June 5, 2019.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Biden Wants Sanctions Against Uganda Because Its Government Passed Anti-LGBT Laws Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute, In an excellent display of how US foreign policy can be used as a means of pandering to domestic interest groups, the Biden administration has threatened to impose sanctions on Uganda as punishment for that regime's adoption of new laws criminalizing some types of homosexual behavior.  While it is abundantly clear that this move from the Ugandan state presents absolutely no threat to any vital US interest, the Biden administration apparently believes the situation requires immediate action by the US regime. According to Axios, the Biden Administration's proposed actions includ[e] whether the U.S. will continue to safely deliver services under the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and other forms of assistance and investments. ... Biden administration officials will also review Uganda's eligibility for the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which provides eligible sub-Saharan African countries with duty-free access to the U.S. market for hundreds of products. What exactly are these new laws that require the State Department to get involved in the internal affairs of a country 8,000 miles away? According to The Hill,  The new anti-gay law would impose the death penalty in cases of “aggravated homosexuality” and would impose a life sentence for engaging in gay sex. The state defines “aggravated homosexuality” as homosexual acts carried out by those infected with H.I.V. or homosexual acts that involve children, disabled people, or those drugged against their will.  Or put another way, the death penalty will be imposed in many cases on those found guilty of engaging in sex with children and with people unable to consent. Even in those cases, these are pretty harsh penalties, and certainly few Americans—from any part of the political spectrum—would support such measures.  The proposed method of punishing Ugandans is rather curious, however. Note that the sanctions being discussed include—ironically—cutting off AIDS relief dollars, plus dollars that the regime has long insisted are absolutely vital to economic development and poverty relief in the developing world. If that's true, then the US regime proposes trying to impoverish ordinary Ugandans as punishment for acts of the Ugandan regime.  It is also notable that the US regime appears to now be fixated on such laws in Uganda when similar laws already exist on the books of several US allies. For example, the death penalty can be imposed for various homosexual acts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. "Death by stoning" is also inflicted on alleged homosexuals in US ally Pakistan. Moreover, after 20-years of US occupation, Afghanistan imposes similar punishments. Those are just the places where the death penalty is potentially imposed. Homosexual acts are criminalized in a variety of countries that retain friendly relations with the US including Egypt—the top recipient of US foreign aid—plus Iraq, Jordan, South Sudan, and Nigeria. Homosexual sex between males can bring life imprisonment in Tanzania.  So why is Uganda now so much in the crosshairs while Saudi Arabia escapes notice?  The fact is the US regime is threatening sanctions on ordinary Ugandans because it can.  Given that there is no sizable or electorally powerful Ugandan population in the US, it costs the administration nothing to denounce Uganda while also virtue signaling to extremely powerful and well-funded domestic LGBT interest groups. Denouncing the Saudis or the Qataris, on the other, hand might bring geopolitical "complications" and thus you won't hear much about Saudi or Qatari punishment of homosexual acts in the US media or in Washington.  The US's Moralistic and Imperialist Impulses  Moreover, Washington's willingness to immediately begin threatening sanctions against some faraway country has been part of the overall imperialist impulse that has prevailed in Washington since the end of the Cold War. This was when the US shifted toward become an ever-more-aggressive world morality police that would attempt to globally "protect right" in vague mimicry of how the federal government—via the federal courts and threats of cutting off federal funding—dictates to the states what counts as acceptable law. This new scheme was apparent by 1994 when Murray Rothbard wrote a sarcastic article suggesting that the US be prepared to invade any foreign country where the local regime has not sufficiently embraced the American regime's cultural ideals. The key, Rothbard contends, was to define every foreign "deviation" as a threat to US national security. Rothbard noted that even by the mid 1990s, American interventionists such as the neoconservatives had already "cunningly redefined 'national interest' to cover every ill, every grievance, under the sun." This naturally would lead, Rothbard suggested, to the need to intervene in nearly every foreign country on earth: Is someone starving somewhere, however remote from our borders? That's a problem for our national interest. Is someone or some group killing some other group anywhere in the world? That's our national interest. Is some government not a "democracy" as defined by our liberal-neocon elites? That challenges our national interest. Is someone committing Hate Thought anywhere on the globe? That has to be solved in our national interest. ...And so every grievance everywhere constitutes our national interest, and it becomes the obligation of good old Uncle Sam, as the Only Remaining Superpower and the world's designated Mr. Fixit, to solve each and every one of these problems. For "we cannot stand idly by" while anyone anywhere starves, hits someone over the head, is undemocratic, or commits a Hate Crime. And so, since no other countries shape up to U.S. standards in a world of Sole Superpower they must be severely chastised by the U.S., I make a Modest Proposal for the only possible consistent and coherent foreign policy: the U.S. must, very soon, Invade the Entire World! Sanctions are peanuts; we must invade every country in the world, perhaps softening them up beforehand with a wonderful high-tech missile bombing show courtesy of CNN.  The good news in the Uganda case is that at least we're not hearing any calls for actual regime change or "boots on the ground" in Uganda (so far).  Fortunately, many Americans haven't yet bought into the idea that every objectionable act by foreign regimes can be defined as a threat to US national interests. This is why even today, when Washington targets some foreign regime for "regime change" or economic sanctions or a volley of cruise missiles, the American interventionists usually try to at least suggest that the target regime is some kind of threat to US "national interests."  Experience suggests that if the regime really wants to get the American public riled up about a new war, Washington has to make the case for something beyond mere "humanitarian" intervention. This is why the Bush administration felt it had to trump up accusations of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. It's why President Obama claimed the US has a "national security interest in ... ensuring that we’ve got a stable Syria." It's why those who wanted a US war with Bosnia insisted that conflict in the Balkans in the mid 1990s provided a threat to "vital" US interests such as "European stability" and NATO unity.  Sometimes, though, some foreign countries are so obviously not a threat to the US that "humanitarian" meddling through military action isn't politically viable. In those cases, the regime usually falls back on "sanctions."  This strategy has been around a long time. Murray Rothbard noticed this trend in 1994 as well, and he listed just some of the real-life suggested sanctions that could be employed to whip foreign regimes into line: In recent weeks, in addition to humanitarian troops, there had been escalating talk of American "sanctions": against North Korea of course, but also against Japan (for not buying more U.S. exports), against Haiti, against the Bosnian Serbs... Jesse Jackson wants the U.S. to invade Nigeria pronto, and now we have Senato[r] Kerry (D., Mass.) calling for sanctions against our ancient foe, Canada, for not welcoming New England fishermen in its waters. Uganda is just one of a great many regimes targeted in this fashion in recent decades.  Yet the landscape has changed considerably since 1994. In 2023, the US obsession with sanctioning dozens of countries has backfired and begun to isolate the US more and more from the developing world and from any regime that doesn't enjoy taking orders from Washington. This includes the regimes in some of the world largest economies, including China, India, and Brazil. The US's tendency to incessantly turn to sanctions to make a political point—and the apparent capriciousness with which the US regime is willing to do so—only motivates the world's regimes to insulate themselves from the US, whether through minimizing dollar transactions or forming tighter alliances with potential allies outside the US orbit. We may soon find Uganda looking for a similar way out.  Read More: "Thanks to Sanctions, the US Is Losing Its Grip on the Middle East" "Will Biden Sanction Half the World to Isolate Russia?" "Why Sanctions Don't Work, and Why They Mostly Hurt Ordinary People"  Tyler Durden Sat, 06/03/2023 - 19:30.....»»